theocritus _translated into english verse_. by c.s. calverley, _late fellow of christ's college, cambridge_. author of "fly leaves," etc. third edition. preface. i had intended translating all or nearly all these idylls into blank verse, as the natural equivalent of greek or of latin hexameters; only deviating into rhyme where occasion seemed to demand it. but i found that other metres had their special advantages: the fourteen-syllable line in particular has that, among others, of containing about the same number of syllables as an ordinary line of theocritus. and there is also no doubt something gained by variety. several recent writers on the subject have laid down that every translation of greek poetry, especially bucolic poetry, must be in rhyme of some sort. but they have seldom stated, and it is hard to see, why. there is no rhyme in the original, and _primâ facie_ should be none in the translation. professor blackie has, it is true, pointed out the "assonances, alliterations, and rhymes," which are found in more or less abundance in ionic greek.[a] these may of course be purely accidental, like the hexameters in livy or the blank-verse lines in mr. dickens's prose: but accidental or not (it may be said) they are there, and ought to be recognised. may we not then recognise them by introducing similar assonances, etc., here and there into the english version? or by availing ourselves of what professor blackie again calls attention to, the "compensating powers"[b] of english? i think with him that it was hard to speak of our language as one which "transforms _boos megaloio boeién_ into 'great ox's hide.'" such phrases as 'the lord is a man of war,' 'the trumpet spake not to the armed throng,' are to my ear quite as grand as homer: and it would be equally fair to ask what we are to make of a language which transforms milton's line into [greek: ê shalpigx ohy proshephê ton hôplismhenon hochlon.][c] but be this as it may, these phenomena are surely too rare and too arbitrary to be adequately represented by any regularly recurring rhyme: and the question remains, what is there in the unrhymed original to which rhyme answers? to me its effect is to divide the verse into couplets, triplets, or (if the word may include them all) _stanzas_ of some kind. without rhyme we have no apparent means of conveying the effect of stanzas. there are of course devices such as repeating a line or part of a line at stated intervals, as is done in 'tears, idle tears' and elsewhere: but clearly none of these would be available to a translator. where therefore he has to express stanzas, it is easy to see that rhyme may be admissible and even necessary. pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and the _in memoriam_ stanza for some one of horace's metres. where the heroes of virgil's eclogues sing alternately four lines each, gray's quatrain seems to suggest itself: and where a similar case occurs in these idylls (as for instance in the ninth) i thought it might be met by taking whatever received english stanza was nearest the required length. pope's couplet again may possibly best convey the pomposity of some idylls and the point of others. and there may be divers considerations of this kind. but, speaking generally, where the translator has not to intimate stanzas--where he has on the contrary to intimate that there are none--rhyme seems at first sight an intrusion and a _suggestio falsi_. no doubt (as has been observed) what 'pastorals' we have are mostly written in what is called the heroic measure. but the reason is, i suppose, not far to seek. dryden and pope wrote 'heroics,' not from any sense of their fitness for bucolic poetry, but from a sense of their universal fitness: and their followers copied them. but probably no scholar would affirm that any poem, original or translated, by pope or dryden or any of their school, really resembles in any degree the bucolic poetry of the greeks. mr. morris, whose poems appear to me to resemble it more almost than anything i have ever seen, of course writes what is technically pope's metre, and equally of course is not of pope's school. whether or no pope and dryden _intended_ to resemble the old bucolic poets in style is, to say the least, immaterial. if they did not, there is no reason whatever why any of us who do should adopt their metre: if they did and failed, there is every reason why we should select a different one. professor conington has adduced one cogent argument against blank verse: that is, that hardly any of us can write it.[d] but if this is so--if the 'blank verse' which we write is virtually prose in disguise--the addition of rhyme would only make it rhymed prose, and we should be as far as ever from "verse really deserving the name."[e] unless (which i can hardly imagine) the mere incident of 'terminal consonance' can constitute that verse which would not be verse independently, this argument is equally good against attempting verse of any kind: we should still be writing disguised, and had better write undisguised, prose. prose translations are of course tenable, and are (i am told) advocated by another very eminent critic. these considerations against them occur to one: that, among the characteristics of his original which the translator is bound to preserve, one is that he wrote metrically; and that the prattle which passes muster, and sounds perhaps rather pretty than otherwise, in metre, would in plain prose be insufferable. very likely some exceptional sort of prose may be meant, which would dispose of all such difficulties: but this would be harder for an ordinary writer to evolve out of his own brain, than to construct any species of verse for which he has at least a model and a precedent. these remarks are made to shew that my metres were not selected, as it might appear, at hap-hazard. metre is not so unimportant as to justify that. for the rest, i have used briggs's edition[f] (_poetæ bucolici græci_), and have never, that i am aware of, taken refuge in any various reading where i could make any sense at all of the text as given by him. sometimes i have been content to put down what i felt was a wrong rendering rather than omit; but only in cases where the original was plainly corrupt, and all suggested emendations seemed to me hopelessly wide of the mark. what, for instance, may be the true meaning of [greek: bolbhost tist kochlhiast] in the fourteenth idyll i have no idea. it is not very important. and no doubt the sense of the last two lines of the "_death of adonis_" is very unlikely to be what i have made it. but no suggestion that i met with seemed to me satisfactory or even plausible: and in this and a few similar cases i have put down what suited the context. occasionally also, as in the idyll here printed last--the one lately discovered by bergk, which i elucidated by the light of fritzsche's conjectures--i have availed myself of an opinion which professor conington somewhere expresses, to the effect that, where two interpretations are tenable, it is lawful to accept for the purposes of translation the one you might reject as a commentator. [greek: tetootaiost] has i dare say nothing whatever to do with 'quartan fever.' on one point, rather a minor one, i have ventured to dissent from professor blackie and others: namely, in retaining the greek, instead of adopting the roman, nomenclature. professor blackie says[g] that there are some men by whom "it is esteemed a grave offence to call jupiter jupiter," which begs the question: and that jove "is much more musical" than zeus, which begs another. granting (what might be questioned) that _zeus, aphrodite_, and _eros_ are as absolutely the same individuals with _jupiter, venus_, and _cupid_ as _odysseus_ undoubtedly is with _ulysses_--still i cannot see why, in making a version of (say) theocritus, one should not use by way of preference those names by which he invariably called them, and which are characteristic of him: why, in turning a greek author into english, we should begin by turning all the proper names into latin. professor blackie's authoritative statement[h] that "there are whole idylls in theocritus which would sound ridiculous in any other language than that of tam o' shanter" i accept of course unhesitatingly, and should like to see it acted upon by himself or any competent person. but a translator is bound to interpret all as best he may: and an attempt to write tam o' shanter's language by one who was not tam o' shanter's countryman would, i fear, result in something more ridiculous still. c.s.c. *** for cometas, in idyll v., read _comatas_. footnotes: [footnote a: blackie's _homer_, vol. i., pp. 413, 414.] [footnote b: _ibid_., page 377, etc.] [footnote c: professor kingsley.] [footnote d: preface to conington's _æneid_, page ix.] [footnote e: _ibid_.] [footnote f: since writing the above lines i have had the advantage of seeing mr. paley's _theocritus_, which was not out when i made my version.] [footnote g: blackie's _homer_, preface, pp. xii., xiii.] [footnote h: blackie's _homer_, vol. i., page 384.] contents. idyll i. the death of daphnis idyll ii. the sorceress idyll iii. the serenade idyll iv. the herdsman idyll v. the battle of the bards idyll vi. the drawn battle idyll vii. harvest-home idyll viii. the triumph of daphnis idyll ix. pastorals idyll x. the two workmen idyll xi. the giant's wooing idyll xii. the comrades idyll xiii. hylas idyll xiv. the love of æschines idyll xv. the festival of adonis idyll xvi. the value of song idyll xvii. the praise of ptolemy idyll xviii. the bridal of helen idyll xix. love stealing honey idyll xx. town and country idyll xxi. the fishermen idyll xxii. the sons of leda idyll xxiii. love avenged idyll xxiv. the infant heracles idyll xxv. heracles the lion slayer idyll xxvi. the bacchanals idyll xxvii. a countryman's wooing idyll xxviii. the distaff idyll xxix. loves idyll xxx. the death of adonis idyll xxxi. loves fragment from the "berenice" epigrams and epitaphs:- i.--vi. vii.--for a statue of æsculapius viii.--ortho's epitaph ix.--epitaph of cleonicus x.--for a statue of the muses xi.--epitaph of eusthenes xii.--for a tripod erected by damoteles to bacchus xiii.--for a statue of anacreon xiv.--epitaph of eurymedon xv.--another xvi.--for a statue of the heavenly aphrodite xvii.--to epicharmus xviii.--epitaph of cleita, nurse of medeius xix.--to archilochus xx.--under a statue of peisander xxi.--epitaph of hipponax xxii.--on his own book idyll i. the death of daphnis. _thyrsis. a goatherd._ thyrsis. sweet are the whispers of yon pine that makes low music o'er the spring, and, goatherd, sweet thy piping; second thou to pan alone. is his the horned ram? then thine the goat. is his the goat? to thee shall fall the kid; and toothsome is the flesh of unmilked kids. goatherd. shepherd, thy lay is as the noise of streams falling and falling aye from yon tall crag. if for their meed the muses claim the ewe, be thine the stall-fed lamb; or if they choose the lamb, take thou the scarce less-valued ewe. thyrsis. pray, by the nymphs, pray, goatherd, seat thee here against this hill-slope in the tamarisk shade, and pipe me somewhat, while i guard thy goats. goatherd. i durst not, shepherd, o i durst not pipe at noontide; fearing pan, who at that hour rests from the toils of hunting. harsh is he; wrath at his nostrils aye sits sentinel. but, thyrsis, thou canst sing of daphnis' woes; high is thy name for woodland minstrelsy: then rest we in the shadow of the elm fronting priapus and the fountain-nymphs. there, where the oaks are and the shepherd's seat, sing as thou sang'st erewhile, when matched with him of libya, chromis; and i'll give thee, first, to milk, ay thrice, a goat--she suckles twins, yet ne'ertheless can fill two milkpails full;- next, a deep drinking-cup, with sweet wax scoured, two-handled, newly-carven, smacking yet 0' the chisel. ivy reaches up and climbs about its lip, gilt here and there with sprays of woodbine, that enwreathed about it flaunts her saffron fruitage. framed therein appears a damsel ('tis a miracle of art) in robe and snood: and suitors at her side with locks fair-flowing, on her right and left, battle with words, that fail to reach her heart. she, laughing, glances now on this, flings now her chance regards on that: they, all for love wearied and eye-swoln, find their labour lost. carven elsewhere an ancient fisher stands on the rough rocks: thereto the old man with pains drags his great casting-net, as one that toils full stoutly: every fibre of his frame seems fishing; so about the gray-beard's neck (in might a youngster yet) the sinews swell. hard by that wave-beat sire a vineyard bends beneath its graceful load of burnished grapes; a boy sits on the rude fence watching them. near him two foxes: down the rows of grapes one ranging steals the ripest; one assails with wiles the poor lad's scrip, to leave him soon stranded and supperless. he plaits meanwhile with ears of corn a right fine cricket-trap, and fits it on a rush: for vines, for scrip, little he cares, enamoured of his toy. the cup is hung all round with lissom briar, triumph of æolian art, a wondrous sight. it was a ferryman's of calydon: a goat it cost me, and a great white cheese. ne'er yet my lips came near it, virgin still it stands. and welcome to such boon art thou, if for my sake thou'lt sing that lay of lays. i jest not: up, lad, sing: no songs thou'lt own in the dim land where all things are forgot. thysis [_sings_]. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. the voice of thyrsis. ætna's thyrsis i. where were ye, nymphs, oh where, while daphnis pined? in fair penëus' or in pindus' glens? for great anapus' stream was not your haunt, nor ætna's cliff, nor acis' sacred rill. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. o'er him the wolves, the jackals howled o'er him; the lion in the oak-copse mourned his death. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. the kine and oxen stood around his feet, the heifers and the calves wailed all for him. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. first from the mountain hermes came, and said, "daphnis, who frets thee? lad, whom lov'st thou so?" _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. came herdsmen, shepherds came, and goatherds came; all asked what ailed the lad. priapus came and said, "why pine, poor daphnis? while the maid foots it round every pool and every grove, (_begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_) "o lack-love and perverse, in quest of thee; herdsman in name, but goatherd rightlier called. with eyes that yearn the goatherd marks his kids run riot, for he fain would frisk as they: (_begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_): "with eyes that yearn dost thou too mark the laugh of maidens, for thou may'st not share their glee." still naught the herdsman said: he drained alone his bitter portion, till the fatal end. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. came aphroditè, smiles on her sweet face, false smiles, for heavy was her heart, and spake: "so, daphnis, thou must try a fall with love! but stalwart love hath won the fall of thee." _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. then "ruthless aphroditè," daphnis said, "accursed aphroditè, foe to man! say'st thou mine hour is come, my sun hath set? dead as alive, shall daphnis work love woe." _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. "fly to mount ida, where the swain (men say) and aphroditè--to anchises fly: there are oak-forests; here but galingale, and bees that make a music round the hives. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. "adonis owed his bloom to tending flocks and smiting hares, and bringing wild beasts down. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. "face once more diomed: tell him 'i have slain the herdsman daphnis; now i challenge thee.' _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. "farewell, wolf, jackal, mountain-prisoned bear! ye'll see no more by grove or glade or glen your herdsman daphnis! arethuse, farewell, and the bright streams that pour down thymbris' side. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. "i am that daphnis, who lead here my kine, bring here to drink my oxen and my calves. _begin, sweet maids, begin the woodland song_. "pan, pan, oh whether great lyceum's crags thou haunt'st to-day, or mightier mænalus, come to the sicel isle! abandon now rhium and helicè, and the mountain-cairn (that e'en gods cherish) of lycaon's son! _forget, sweet maids, forget your woodland song_. "come, king of song, o'er this my pipe, compact with wax and honey-breathing, arch thy lip: for surely i am torn from life by love. _forget, sweet maids, forget your woodland song_. "from thicket now and thorn let violets spring, now let white lilies drape the juniper, and pines grow figs, and nature all go wrong: for daphnis dies. let deer pursue the hounds, and mountain-owls outsing the nightingale. _forget, sweet maids, forget your woodland song_." so spake he, and he never spake again. fain aphroditè would have raised his head; but all his thread was spun. so down the stream went daphnis: closed the waters o'er a head dear to the nine, of nymphs not unbeloved. now give me goat and cup; that i may milk the one, and pour the other to the muse. fare ye well, muses, o'er and o'er farewell! i'll sing strains lovelier yet in days to be. goatherd. thyrsis, let honey and the honeycomb fill thy sweet mouth, and figs of ægilus: for ne'er cicala trilled so sweet a song. here is the cup: mark, friend, how sweet it smells: the hours, thou'lt say, have washed it in their well. hither, cissætha! thou, go milk her! kids, be steady, or your pranks will rouse the ram. idyll ii. the sorceress. where are the bay-leaves, thestylis, and the charms? fetch all; with fiery wool the caldron crown; let glamour win me back my false lord's heart! twelve days the wretch hath not come nigh to me, nor made enquiry if i die or live, nor clamoured (oh unkindness!) at my door. sure his swift fancy wanders otherwhere, the slave of aphroditè and of love. i'll off to timagetus' wrestling-school at dawn, that i may see him and denounce his doings; but i'll charm him now with charms. so shine out fair, o moon! to thee i sing my soft low song: to thee and hecatè the dweller in the shades, at whose approach e'en the dogs quake, as on she moves through blood and darkness and the barrows of the slain. all hail, dread hecatè: companion me unto the end, and work me witcheries potent as circè or medea wrought, or perimedè of the golden hair! _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. first we ignite the grain. nay, pile it on: where are thy wits flown, timorous thestylis? shall i be flouted, i, by such as thou? pile, and still say, 'this pile is of his bones.' _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. delphis racks me: i burn him in these bays. as, flame-enkindled, they lift up their voice, blaze once, and not a trace is left behind: so waste his flesh to powder in yon fire! _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. e'en as i melt, not uninspired, the wax, may mindian delphis melt this hour with love: and, swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round, may aphroditè whirl him to my door. _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. next burn the husks. hell's adamantine floor and aught that else stands firm can artemis move. thestylis, the hounds bay up and down the town: the goddess stands i' the crossroads: sound the gongs. _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. hushed are the voices of the winds and seas; but o not hushed the voice of my despair. he burns my being up, who left me here no wife, no maiden, in my misery. _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. thrice i pour out; speak thrice, sweet mistress, thus: "what face soe'er hangs o'er him be forgot clean as, in dia, theseus (legends say) forgat his ariadne's locks of love." _turn, magic, wheel, draw homeward him i love_. the coltsfoot grows in arcady, the weed that drives the mountain-colts and swift mares wild. like them may delphis rave: so, maniac-wise, race from his burnished brethren home to me. _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. he lost this tassel from his robe; which i shred thus, and cast it on the raging flames. ah baleful love! why, like the marsh-born leech, cling to my flesh, and drain my dark veins dry? _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. from a crushed eft tomorrow he shall drink death! but now, thestylis, take these herbs and smear that threshold o'er, whereto at heart i cling still, still--albeit he thinks scorn of me- and spit, and say, ''tis delphis' bones i smear.' _turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him i love_. [_exit thestylis_. now, all alone, i'll weep a love whence sprung when born? who wrought my sorrow? anaxo came, her basket in her hand, to artemis' grove. bound for the festival, troops of forest beasts stood round, and in the midst a lioness. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. theucharidas' slave, my thracian nurse now dead then my near neighbour, prayed me and implored to see the pageant: i, the poor doomed thing, went with her, trailing a fine silken train, and gathering round me clearista's robe. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. now, the mid-highway reached by lycon's farm, delphis and eudamippus passed me by. with beards as lustrous as the woodbine's gold and breasts more sheeny than thyself, o moon, fresh from the wrestler's glorious toil they came. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. i saw, i raved, smit (weakling) to my heart. my beauty withered, and i cared no more for all that pomp; and how i gained my home i know not: some strange fever wasted me. ten nights and days i lay upon my bed. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. and wan became my flesh, as 't had been dyed, and all my hair streamed off, and there was left but bones and skin. whose threshold crossed i not, or missed what grandam's hut who dealt in charms? for no light thing was this, and time sped on. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. at last i spake the truth to that my maid: "seek, an thou canst, some cure for my sore pain. alas, i am all the mindian's! but begone, and watch by timagetus' wrestling-school: there doth he haunt, there soothly take his rest. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. "find him alone: nod softly: say, 'she waits'; and bring him." so i spake: she went her way, and brought the lustrous-limbed one to my roof. and i, the instant i beheld him step lightfooted o'er the threshold of my door, _(bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_,) became all cold like snow, and from my brow brake the damp dewdrops: utterance i had none, not e'en such utterance as a babe may make that babbles to its mother in its dreams; but all my fair frame stiffened into wax. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. he bent his pitiless eyes on me; looked down, and sate him on my couch, and sitting, said: "thou hast gained on me, simætha, (e'en as i gained once on young philinus in the race,) bidding me hither ere i came unasked. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. "for i had come, by eros i had come, this night, with comrades twain or may-be more, the fruitage of the wine-god in my robe, and, wound about my brow with ribands red, the silver leaves so dear to heracles. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. "had ye said 'enter,' well: for 'mid my peers high is my name for goodliness and speed: i had kissed that sweet mouth once and gone my way. but had the door been barred, and i thrust out, with brand and axe would we have stormed ye then. _bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_. "now be my thanks recorded, first to love, next to thee, maiden, who didst pluck me out, a half-burned helpless creature, from the flames, and badst me hither. it is love that lights a fire more fierce than his of lipara; _(bethink thee, mistress moon, whence came my love_.) "scares, mischief-mad, the maiden from her bower, the bride from her warm couch." he spake: and i, a willing listener, sat, my hand in his, among the cushions, and his cheek touched mine, each hotter than its wont, and we discoursed in soft low language. need i prate to thee, sweet moon, of all we said and all we did? till yesterday he found no fault with me, nor i with him. but lo, to-day there came philista's mother--hers who flutes to me- with her melampo's; just when up the sky gallop the mares that chariot rose-limbed dawn: and divers tales she brought me, with the rest how delphis loved, she knew not rightly whom: but this she knew; that of the rich wine, aye he poured 'to love;' and at the last had fled, to line, she deemed, the fair one's hall with flowers. such was my visitor's tale, and it was true: for thrice, nay four times, daily he would stroll hither, leave here full oft his dorian flask: now--'tis a fortnight since i saw his face. doth he then treasure something sweet elsewhere? am i forgot? i'll charm him now with charms. but let him try me more, and by the fates he'll soon be knocking at the gates of hell. spells of such power are in this chest of mine, learned, lady, from mine host in palestine. lady, farewell: turn ocean-ward thy steeds: as i have purposed, so shall i fulfil. farewell, thou bright-faced moon! ye stars, farewell, that wait upon the car of noiseless night. idyll iii. the serenade. i pipe to amaryllis; while my goats, tityrus their guardian, browse along the fell. o tityrus, as i love thee, feed my goats: and lead them to the spring, and, tityrus, 'ware the lifted crest of yon gray libyan ram. ah winsome amaryllis! why no more greet'st thou thy darling, from the caverned rock peeping all coyly? think'st thou scorn of him? hath a near view revealed him satyr-shaped of chin and nostril? i shall hang me soon. see here ten apples: from thy favourite tree i plucked them: i shall bring ten more anon. ah witness my heart-anguish! oh were i a booming bee, to waft me to thy lair, threading the fern and ivy in whose depths thou nestlest! i have learned what love is now: fell god, he drank the lioness's milk, in the wild woods his mother cradled him, whose fire slow-burns me, smiting to the bone. o thou whose glance is beauty and whose heart all marble: o dark-eyebrowed maiden mine! cling to thy goatherd, let him kiss thy lips, for there is sweetness in an empty kiss. thou wilt not? piecemeal i will rend the crown, the ivy-crown which, dear, i guard for thee, inwov'n with scented parsley and with flowers: oh i am desperate--what betides me, what?- still art thou deaf? i'll doff my coat of skins and leap into yon waves, where on the watch for mackerel olpis sits: tho' i 'scape death, that i have all but died will pleasure thee. that learned i when (i murmuring 'loves she me?') the _love-in-absence_, crushed, returned no sound, but shrank and shrivelled on my smooth young wrist. i learned it of the sieve-divining crone who gleaned behind the reapers yesterday: 'thou'rt wrapt up all,' agraia said, 'in her; she makes of none account her worshipper.' lo! a white goat, and twins, i keep for thee: mermnon's lass covets them: dark she is of skin: but yet hers be they; thou but foolest me. she cometh, by the quivering of mine eye. i'll lean against the pine-tree here and sing. she may look round: she is not adamant. [_sings_] hippomenes, when he a maid would wed, took apples in his hand and on he sped. famed atalanta's heart was won by this; she marked, and maddening sank in love's abyss. from othrys did the seer melampus stray to pylos with his herd: and lo there lay in a swain's arms a maid of beauty rare; alphesiboea, wise of heart, she bare. did not adonis rouse to such excess of frenzy her whose name is loveliness, (he a mere lad whose wethers grazed the hill) that, dead, he's pillowed on her bosom still? endymion sleeps the sleep that changeth not: and, maiden mine, i envy him his lot! envy iasion's: his it was to gain bliss that i dare not breathe in ears profane. my head aches. what reck'st thou? i sing no more: e'en where i fell i'll lie, until the wolves rend me--may that be honey in thy mouth! idyll iv. the herdsmen. _battus. corydon._ battus. who owns these cattle, corydon? philondas? prythee say. corydon. no, ægon: and he gave them me to tend while he's away. battus. dost milk them in the gloaming, when none is nigh to see? corydon. the old man brings the calves to suck, and keeps an eye on me. battus. and to what region then hath flown the cattle's rightful lord? corydon. hast thou not heard? with milo he vanished elis-ward. battus. how! was the wrestler's oil e'er yet so much as seen by him? corydon. men say he rivals heracles in lustiness of limb. battus. i'm polydeuces' match (or so my mother says) and more. corydon. --so off he started; with a spade, and of these ewes a score. battus. this milo will be teaching wolves how they should raven next. corydon. --and by these bellowings his kine proclaim how sore they're vexed. battus. poor kine! they've found their master a sorry knave indeed. corydon. they're poor enough, i grant you: they have not heart to feed. battus. look at that heifer! sure there's naught, save bare bones, left of her. pray, does she browse on dewdrops, as doth the grasshopper? corydon. not she, by heaven! she pastures now by æsarus' glades, and handfuls fair i pluck her there of young and green grass-blades; now bounds about latymnus, that gathering-place of shades. battus. that bull again, the red one, my word but he is lean! i wish the sybarite burghers aye may offer to the queen of heaven as pitiful a beast: those burghers are so mean! corydon. yet to the salt lake's edges i drive him, i can swear; up physcus, up neæthus' side--he lacks not victual there, with dittany and endive and foxglove for his fare. battus. well, well! i pity ægon. his cattle, go they must to rack and ruin, all because vain-glory was his lust. the pipe that erst he fashioned is doubtless scored with rust? corydon. nay, by the nymphs! that pipe he left to me, the self-same day he made for pisa: i am too a minstrel in my way: well the flute-part in '_pyrrhus_' and in '_glauca_' can i play. i sing too '_here's to croton_' and '_zacynthus o 'tis fair_,' and '_eastward to lacinium_:'--the bruiser milo there his single self ate eighty loaves; there also did he pull down from its mountain-dwelling, by one hoof grasped, a bull, and gave it amaryllis: the maidens screamed with fright; as for the owner of the bull he only laughed outright. battus. sweet amaryllis! thou alone, though dead, art unforgot. dearer than thou, whose light is quenched, my very goats are not. oh for the all-unkindly fate that's fallen to my lot! corydon. cheer up, brave lad! tomorrow may ease thee of thy pain: aye for the living are there hopes, past' hoping are the slain: and now zeus sends us sunshine, and now he sends us rain. battus. i'm better. beat those young ones off! e'en now their teeth attack that olive's shoots, the graceless brutes! back, with your white face, back! corydon. back to thy hill, cymætha! great pan, how deaf thou art! i shall be with thee presently, and in the end thou'lt smart. i warn thee, keep thy distance. look, up she creeps again! oh were my hare-crook in nay hand, i'd give it to her then! battus. for heaven's sake, corydon, look here! just now a bramble-spike ran, there, into my instep--and oh how deep they strike, those lancewood-shafts! a murrain light on that calf, i say! i got it gaping after her. canst thou discern it, pray? corydon. ay, ay; and here i have it, safe in my finger-nails. battus. eh! at how slight a matter how tall a warrior quails! corydon. ne'er range the hill-crest, battus, all sandal-less and bare: because the thistle and the thorn lift aye their plumed heads there. battus. --say, corydon, does that old man we wot of (tell me please!) still haunt the dark-browed little girl whom once he used to tease? corydon. ay my poor boy, that doth he: i saw them yesterday down by the byre; and, trust me, loving enough were they. battus. well done, my veteran light-o'-love! in deeming thee mere man, i wronged thy sire: some satyr he, or an uncouth-limbed pan. idyll v. the battle of the bards. _cometas. lacon. morson_. cometas. goats, from a shepherd who stands here, from lacon, keep away: sibyrtas owns him; and he stole my goatskin yesterday. lacon. hi! lambs! avoid yon fountain. have ye not eyes to see cometas, him who filched a pipe but two days back from me? cometas. sibyrtas' bondsman own a pipe? whence gotst thou that, and how? tootling through straws with corydon mayhap's beneath thee now? lacon. 'twas lycon's gift, your highness. but pray, cometas, say, what is that skin wherewith thou saidst that lacon walked away? why, thy lord's self had ne'er a skin whereon his limbs to lay. cometas. the skin that crocylus gave me, a dark one streaked with white, the day he slew his she-goat. why, thou wert ill with spite, then, my false friend; and thou would'st end by beggaring me quite. lacon. did lacon, did calæthis' son purloin a goatskin? no, by pan that haunts the sea-beach! lad, if i served thee so, crazed may i drop from yon hill-top to crathis' stream below! cometas. nor pipe of thine, good fellow--the ladies of the lake so be still kind and good to me--did e'er cometas take. lacon. be daphnis' woes my portion, should that my credence win! still, if thou list to stake a kid--that surely were no sin- come on, i'll sing it out with thee--until thou givest in. cometas. '_the hog he braved athene._' as for the kid, 'tis there: you stake a lamb against him--that fat one--if you dare. lacon. fox! were that fair for either? at shearing who'd prefer horsehair to wool? or when the goat stood handy, suffer her to nurse her firstling, and himself go milk a blatant cur? cometas. the same who deemed his hornet's-buzz the true cicala's note, and braved--like you--his better. and so forsooth you vote my kid a trifle? then come on, fellow! i stake the goat. lacon. why be so hot? art thou on fire? first prythee take thy seat 'neath this wild woodland olive: thy tones will sound more sweet. here falls a cold rill drop by drop, and green grass-blades uprear their heads, and fallen leaves are thick, and locusts prattle here. cometas. hot i am not; but hurt i am, and sorely, when i think that thou canst look me in the face and never bleach nor blink- me, thine own boyhood's tutor! go, train the she-wolf's brood: train dogs--that they may rend thee! this, this is gratitude! lacon. when learned i from thy practice or thy preaching aught that's right, thou puppet, thou misshapen lump of ugliness and spite? cometas. when? when i beat thee, wailing sore: yon goats looked on with glee, and bleated; and were dealt with e'en as i had dealt with thee. lacon. well, hunchback, shallow be thy grave as was thy judgment then! but hither, hither! thou'lt not dip in herdsman's lore again. cometas. nay, here are oaks and galingale: the hum of housing bees makes the place pleasant, and the birds are piping in the trees. and here are two cold streamlets; here deeper shadows fall than yon place owns, and look what cones drop from the pinetree tall. lacon. come hither, and tread on lambswool that is soft as any dream: still more unsavoury than thyself to me thy goatskins seem. here will i plant a bowl of milk, our ladies' grace to win; and one, as huge, beside it, sweet olive-oil therein. cometas. come hither, and trample dainty fern and poppy-blossom: sleep on goatskins that are softer than thy fleeces piled three deep. here will i plant eight milkpails, great pan's regard to gain, bound them eight cups: full honeycombs shall every cup contain. lacon. well! there essay thy woodcraft: thence fight me, never budge from thine own oak; e'en have thy way. but who shall be our judge? oh, if lycopas with his kine should chance this way to trudge! cometas. nay, i want no lycopas. but hail yon woodsman, do: 'tis morson--see! his arms are full of bracken--there, by you. lacon. we'll hail him. cometas. ay, you hail him. lacon. friend, 'twill not take thee long: we're striving which is master, we twain, in woodland song: and thou, my good friend morson, ne'er look with favouring eyes on me; nor yet to yonder lad be fain to judge the prize. cometas. nay, by the nymphs, sweet morson, ne'er for cometas' sake stretch thou a point; nor e'er let him undue advantage take. sibyrtas owns yon wethers; a thurian is he: and here, my friend, eumares' goats, of sybaris, you may see. lacon. and who asked thee, thou naughty knave, to whom belonged these flocks, sibyrtas, or (it might be) me? eh, thou'rt a chatter-box! cometas. the simple truth, most worshipful, is all that i allege: i'm not for boasting. but thy wit hath all too keen an edge. lacon. come sing, if singing's in thee--and may our friend get back to town alive! heaven help us, lad, how thy tongue doth clack! cometas. [_sings_] daphnis the mighty minstrel was less precious to the nine than i. i offered yesterday two kids upon their shrine. lacon. [_sings_] ay, but apollo fancies me hugely: for him i rear a lordly ram: and, look you, the carnival is near. cometas. twin kids hath every goat i milk, save two. my maid, my own, eyes me and asks 'at milking time, rogue, art thou all alone?' lacon. go to! nigh twenty baskets doth lacon fill with cheese: hath time to woo a sweetheart too upon the blossomed leas. cometas. clarissa pelts her goatherd with apples, should he stray by with his goats; and pouts her lip in a quaint charming way. lacon. me too a darling smooth of face notes as i tend my flocks: how maddeningly o'er that fair neck ripple those shining locks! cometas. tho' dogrose and anemone are fair in their degree, the rose that blooms by garden-walls still is the rose for me. lacon. tho' acorns' cups are fair, their taste is bitterness, and still i'll choose, for honeysweet are they, the apples of the hill. cometas. a cushat i will presently procure and give to her who loves me: i know where it sits; up in the juniper. lacon. pooh! a soft fleece, to make a coat, i'll give the day i shear my brindled ewe--(no hand but mine shall touch it)--to my dear. cometas. back, lambs, from that wild-olive: and be content to browse here on the shoulder of the hill, beneath the myrtle boughs. lacon. run, (will ye?) ball and dogstar, down from that oak tree, run: and feed where spot is feeding, and catch the morning sun. cometas. i have a bowl of cypress-wood: i have besides a cup: praxiteles designed them: for _her_ they're treasured up. lacon. i have a dog who throttles wolves: he loves the sheep, and they love him: i'll give him to my dear, to keep wild beasts at bay. cometas. ye locusts that o'erleap my fence, oh let my vines escape your clutches, i beseech you: the bloom is on the grape. lacon. ye crickets, mark how nettled our friend the goatherd is! i ween, ye cost the reapers pangs as acute as his. cometas. those foxes with their bushy tails, i hate to see them crawl round micon's homestead and purloin his grapes at evenfall. lacon. _i_ hate to see the beetles that come warping on the wind. and climb philondas' trees, and leave never a fig behind. cometas. have you forgot that cudgelling i gave you? at each stroke you grinned and twisted with a grace, and clung to yonder oak. lacon. that i've forgot--but i have not, how once eumares tied you to that selfsame oak-trunk, and tanned your unclean hide. cometas. there's some one ill--of heartburn. you note it, i presume, morson? go quick, and fetch a squill from some old beldam's tomb. lacon. i think i'm stinging somebody, as morson too perceives- go to the river and dig up a clump of sowbread-leaves. cometas. may himera flow, not water, but milk: and may'st thou blush, crathis, with wine; and fruitage grow upon every rush. lacon. for me may sybaris' fountain flow, pure honey: so that you, my fair, may dip your pitcher each morn in honey-dew. cometas. my goats are fed on clover and goat's-delight: they tread on lentisk leaves; or lie them down, ripe strawberries o'er their head. lacon. my sheep crop honeysuckle bloom, while all around them blows in clusters rich the jasmine, as brave as any rose. cometas. i scorn my maid; for when she took my cushat, she did not draw with both hands my face to hers and kiss me on the spot. lacon. i love my love, and hugely: for, when i gave my flute, i was rewarded with a kiss, a loving one to boot. cometas. lacon, the nightingale should scarce be challenged by the jay, nor swan by hoopoe: but, poor boy, thou aye wert for a fray. morson. i bid the shepherd hold his peace. cometas, unto you i, morson, do adjudge the lamb. you'll first make offering due unto the nymphs: then savoury meat you'll send to morson too. cometas. by pan i will! snort, all my herd of he-goats: i shall now o'er lacon, shepherd as he is, crow ye shall soon see how. i've won, and i could leap sky-high! ye also dance and skip, my hornèd ewes: in sybaris' fount to-morrow all shall dip. ho! you, sir, with the glossy coat and dangerous crest; you dare look at a ewe, till i have slain my lamb, and ill you'll fare. what! is he at his tricks again? he is, and he will get (or my name's not cometas) a proper pounding yet. idyll vi. the drawn battle. daphnis. damoetas. daphnis the herdsman and damoetas once had driven, aratus, to the selfsame glen. one chin was yellowing, one shewed half a beard. and by a brookside on a summer noon the pair sat down and sang; but daphnis led the song, for daphnis was the challenger. daphnis. "see! galatea pelts thy flock with fruit, and calls their master 'lack-love,' polypheme. thou mark'st her not, blind, blind, but pipest aye thy wood-notes. see again, she smites thy dog: sea-ward the fleeced flocks' sentinel peers and barks, and, through the clear wave visible to her still, careers along the gently babbling beach. look that he leap not on the maid new-risen from her sea-bath and rend her dainty limbs. she fools thee, near or far, like thistle-waifs in hot sweet summer: flies from thee when wooed, unwooed pursues thee: risks all moves to win; for, polypheme, things foul seem fair to love." and then, due prelude made, damoetas sang. damoetas. "i marked her pelt my dog, i was not blind, by pan, by this my one my precious eye that bounds my vision now and evermore! but telemus the seer, be his the woe, his and his children's, that he promised me! yet do i too tease her; i pass her by, pretend to woo another:--and she hears (heaven help me!) and is faint with jealousy; and hurrying from the sea-wave as if stung, scans with keen glance my grotto and my flock. 'twas i hissed on the dog to bark at her; for, when i loved her, he would whine and lay his muzzle in her lap. these things she'll note mayhap, and message send on message soon: but i will bar my door until she swear to make me on this isle fair bridal-bed. and i am less unlovely than men say. i looked into the mere (the mere was calm), and goodly seemed my beard, and goodly seemed my solitary eye, and, half-revealed, my teeth gleamed whiter than the parian marl. thrice for good luck i spat upon my robe: that learned i of the hag cottytaris--her who fluted lately with hippocoön's mowers." damoetas then kissed daphnis lovingly: one gave a pipe and one a goodly flute. straight to the shepherd's flute and herdsman's pipe the younglings bounded in the soft green grass: and neither was o'ermatched, but matchless both. idyll vii. harvest-home. once on a time did eucritus and i (with us amyntas) to the riverside steal from the city. for lycopeus' sons were that day busy with the harvest-home, antigenes and phrasidemus, sprung (if aught thou holdest by the good old names) by clytia from great chalcon--him who erst planted one stalwart knee against the rock, and lo, beneath his foot burinè's rill brake forth, and at its side poplar and elm shewed aisles of pleasant shadow, greenly roofed by tufted leaves. scarce midway were we now, nor yet descried the tomb of brasilas: when, thanks be to the muses, there drew near a wayfarer from crete, young lycidas. the horned herd was his care: a glance might tell so much: for every inch a herdsman he. slung o'er his shoulder was a ruddy hide torn from a he-goat, shaggy, tangle-haired, that reeked of rennet yet: a broad belt clasped a patched cloak round his breast, and for a staff a gnarled wild-olive bough his right hand bore. soon with a quiet smile he spoke--his eye twinkled, and laughter sat upon his lip: "and whither ploddest thou thy weary way beneath the noontide sun, simichidas? for now the lizard sleeps upon the wall, the crested lark folds now his wandering wing. dost speed, a bidden guest, to some reveller's board? or townward to the treading of the grape? for lo! recoiling from thy hurrying feet the pavement-stones ring out right merrily." then i: "friend lycid, all men say that none of haymakers or herdsmen is thy match at piping: and my soul is glad thereat. yet, to speak sooth, i think to rival thee. now look, this road holds holiday to-day: for banded brethren solemnise a feast to richly-dight demeter, thanking her for her good gifts: since with no grudging hand hath the boon goddess filled the wheaten floors. so come: the way, the day, is thine as mine: try we our woodcraft--each may learn from each. i am, as thou, a clarion-voice of song; all hail me chief of minstrels. but i am not, heaven knows, o'ercredulous: no, i scarce can yet (i think) outvie philetas, nor the bard of samos, champion of sicilian song. they are as cicadas challenged by a frog." i spake to gain mine ends; and laughing light he said: "accept this club, as thou'rt indeed a born truth-teller, shaped by heaven's own hand! i hate your builders who would rear a house high as oromedon's mountain-pinnacle: i hate your song-birds too, whose cuckoo-cry struggles (in vain) to match the chian bard. but come, we'll sing forthwith, simichidas, our woodland music: and for my part i- list, comrade, if you like the simple air i forged among the uplands yesterday. [_sings_] safe be my true-love convoyed o'er the main to mitylenè--though the southern blast chase the lithe waves, while westward slant the kids, or low above the verge orion stand- if from love's furnace she will rescue me, for lycidas is parched with hot desire. let halcyons lay the sea-waves and the winds, northwind and westwind, that in shores far-off flutters the seaweed--halcyons, of all birds whose prey is on the waters, held most dear by the green nereids: yea let all things smile on her to mitylenè voyaging, and in fair harbour may she ride at last. i on that day, a chaplet woven of dill or rose or simple violet on my brow, will draw the wine of pteleas from the cask stretched by the ingle. they shall roast me beans, and elbow-deep in thyme and asphodel and quaintly-curling parsley shall be piled my bed of rushes, where in royal ease i sit and, thinking of my darling, drain with stedfast lip the liquor to the dregs. i'll have a pair of pipers, shepherds both, this from acharnæ, from lycopè that; and tityrus shall be near me and shall sing how the swain daphnis loved the stranger-maid; and how he ranged the fells, and how the oaks (such oaks as himera's banks are green withal) sang dirges o'er him waning fast away like snow on athos, or on hæmus high, or rhodopè, or utmost caucasus. and he shall sing me how the big chest held (all through the maniac malice of his lord) a living goatherd: how the round-faced bees, lured from their meadow by the cedar-smell, fed him with daintiest flowers, because the muse had made his throat a well-spring of sweet song. happy cometas, this sweet lot was thine! thee the chest prisoned, for thee the honey-bees toiled, as thou slavedst out the mellowing year: and oh hadst thou been numbered with the quick in my day! i had led thy pretty goats about the hill-side, listening to thy voice: while thou hadst lain thee down 'neath oak or pine, divine cometas, warbling pleasantly." he spake and paused; and thereupon spake i. "i too, friend lycid, as i ranged the fells, have learned much lore and pleasant from the nymphs, whose fame mayhap hath reached the throne of zeus. but this wherewith i'll grace thee ranks the first: thou listen, since the muses like thee well. [_sings_] on me the young loves sneezed: for hapless i am fain of myrto as the goats of spring. but my best friend aratus inly pines for one who loves him not. aristis saw- (a wondrous seer is he, whose lute and lay shrinèd apollo's self would scarce disdain)- how love had scorched aratus to the bone. o pan, who hauntest homolè's fair champaign, bring the soft charmer, whosoe'er it be, unbid to his sweet arms--so, gracious pan, may ne'er thy ribs and shoulderblades be lashed with squills by young arcadians, whensoe'er they are scant of supper! but should this my prayer mislike thee, then on nettles mayest thou sleep, dinted and sore all over from their claws! then mayest thou lodge amid edonian hills by hebrus, in midwinter; there subsist, the bear thy neighbour: and, in summer, range with the far æthiops 'neath the blemmyan rocks where nile is no more seen! but o ye loves, whose cheeks are like pink apples, quit your homes by hyetis, or byblis' pleasant rill, or fair dionè's rocky pedestal, and strike that fair one with your arrows, strike the ill-starred damsel who disdains my friend. and lo, what is she but an o'er-ripe pear? the girls all cry 'her bloom is on the wane.' we'll watch, aratus, at that porch no more, nor waste shoe-leather: let the morning cock crow to wake others up to numb despair! let molon, and none else, that ordeal brave: while we make ease our study, and secure some witch, to charm all evil from our door." i ceased. he smiling sweetly as before, gave me the staff, 'the muses' parting gift,' and leftward sloped toward pyxa. we the while, bent us to phrasydeme's, eucritus and i, and baby-faced amyntas: there we lay half-buried in a couch of fragrant reed and fresh-cut vineleaves, who so glad as we? a wealth of elm and poplar shook o'erhead; hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on from the nymphs' grot, and in the sombre boughs the sweet cicada chirped laboriously. hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away the treefrog's note was heard; the crested lark sang with the goldfinch; turtles made their moan, and o'er the fountain hung the gilded bee. all of rich summer smacked, of autumn all: pears at our feet, and apples at our side rolled in luxuriance; branches on the ground sprawled, overweighed with damsons; while we brushed from the cask's head the crust of four long years. say, ye who dwell upon parnassian peaks, nymphs of castalia, did old chiron e'er set before heracles a cup so brave in pholus' cavern--did as nectarous draughts cause that anapian shepherd, in whose hand rocks were as pebbles, polypheme the strong, featly to foot it o'er the cottage lawns:- as, ladies, ye bid flow that day for us all by demeter's shrine at harvest-home? beside whose cornstacks may i oft again plant my broad fan: while she stands by and smiles, poppies and cornsheaves on each laden arm. idyll viii. the triumph of daphnis. _daphnis. menalcas. a goatherd_. daphnis, the gentle herdsman, met once, as legend tells, menalcas making with his flock the circle of the fells. both chins were gilt with coming beards: both lads could sing and play: menalcas glanced at daphnis, and thus was heard to say:- "art thou for singing, daphnis, lord of the lowing kine? i say my songs are better, by what thou wilt, than thine." then in his turn spake daphnis, and thus he made reply: "o shepherd of the fleecy flock, thou pipest clear and high; but come what will, menalcas, thou ne'er wilt sing as i." menalcas. this art thou fain to ascertain, and risk a bet with me? daphnis. this i full fain would ascertain, and risk a bet with thee. menalcas. but what, for champions such as we, would, seem a fitting prize? daphnis. i stake a calf: stake thou a lamb, its mother's self in size. menalcas. a lamb i'll venture never: for aye at close of day father and mother count the flock, and passing strict are they. daphnis. then what shall be the victor's fee? what wager wilt thou lay? menalcas. a pipe discoursing through nine mouths i made, full fair to view; the wax is white thereon, the line of this and that edge true. i'll risk it: risk my father's own is more than i dare do. daphnis. a pipe discoursing through nine mouths, and fair, hath daphnis too: the wax is white thereon, the line of this and that edge true. but yesterday i made it: this finger feels the pain still, where indeed the rifted reed hath cut it clean in twain. but who shall be our umpire? who listen to our strain? menalcas. suppose we hail yon goatherd; him at whose horned herd now the dog is barking--yonder dog with white upon his brow. then out they called: the goatherd marked them, and up came he; then out they sang; the goatherd their umpire fain would be. to shrill menalcas' lot it fell to start the woodland lay: then daphnis took it up. and thus menalcas led the way. menalcas. "rivers and vales, a glorious birth! oh if menalcas e'er piped aught of pleasant music in your ears: then pasture, nothing loth, his lambs; and let young daphnis fare no worse, should he stray hither with his steers." daphnis. "pastures and rills, a bounteous race! if daphnis sang you e'er such songs as ne'er from nightingale have flowed; then to his herd your fatness lend; and let menalcas share like boon, should e'er he wend along this road." menalcas. "'tis spring, 'tis greenness everywhere; with milk the udders teem, and all things that are young have life anew, where my sweet maiden wanders: but parched and withered seem, when she departeth, lawn and shepherd too." daphnis. "fat are the sheep, the goats bear twins, the hives are thronged with bees, rises the oak beyond his natural growth, where falls my darling's footstep: but hungriness shall seize, when she departeth, herd and herdsman both." menalcas. "come, ram, with thy blunt-muzzled kids and sleek wives at thy side, where winds the brook by woodlands myriad-deep: there is _her_ haunt. go, stump-horn, tell her how proteus plied (a god) the shepherd's trade, with seals for sheep." daphnis. "i ask not gold, i ask not the broad lands of a king; i ask not to be fleeter than the breeze; but 'neath this steep to watch my sheep, feeding as one, and fling (still clasping _her_) my carol o'er the seas." menalcas. "storms are the fruit-tree's bane; the brook's, a summer hot and dry; the stag's a woven net, a gin the dove's; mankind's, a soft sweet maiden. others have pined ere i: zeus! father! hadst not thou thy lady-loves?" thus far, in alternating strains, the lads their woes rehearst: then each one gave a closing stave. thus sang menalcas first:- menalcas. "o spare, good wolf, my weanlings! their milky mothers spare! harm not the little lad that hath so many in his care! what, firefly, is thy sleep so deep? it ill befits a hound, tending a boyish master's flock, to slumber over-sound. and, wethers, of this tender grass take, nothing coy, your fill: so, when it comes, the after-math shall find you feeding still. so! so! graze on, that ye be full, that not an udder fail: part of the milk shall rear the lambs, and part shall fill my pail." then daphnis flung a carol out, as of a nightingale:- daphnis. "me from her grot but yesterday a girl of haughty brow spied as i passed her with my kine, and said, "how fair art thou!" i vow that not one bitter word in answer did i say, but, looking ever on the ground, went silently my way. the heifer's voice, the heifer's breath, are passing sweet to me; and sweet is sleep by summer-brooks upon the breezy lea: as acorns are the green oak's pride, apples the apple-bough's; so the cow glorieth in her calf, the cowherd in his cows." thus the two lads; then spoke the third, sitting his goats among: goatherd. "o daphnis, lovely is thy voice, thy music sweetly sung; such song is pleasanter to me than honey on my tongue. accept this pipe, for thou hast won. and should there be some notes that thou couldst teach me, as i plod alongside with my goats, i'll give thee for thy schooling this ewe, that horns hath none: day after day she'll fill the can, until the milk o'errun." then how the one lad laughed and leaped and clapped his hands for glee! a kid that bounds to meet its dam might dance as merrily. and how the other inly burned, struck down by his disgrace! a maid first parting from her home might wear as sad a face. thenceforth was daphnis champion of all the country side: and won, while yet in topmost youth, a naiad for his bride. idyll ix. pastorals. _daphnis. menalcas. a shepherd._ shepherd. a song from daphnis! open he the lay, he open: and menalcas follow next: while the calves suck, and with the barren kine the young bulls graze, or roam knee-deep in leaves, and ne'er play truant. but a song from thee, daphnis--anon menalcas will reply. daphnis. sweet is the chorus of the calves and kine, and sweet the herdsman's pipe. but none may vie with daphnis; and a rush-strown bed is mine near a cool rill, where carpeted i lie on fair white goatskins. from a hill-top high the westwind swept me down the herd entire, cropping the strawberries: whence it comes that i no more heed summer, with his breath of fire, than lovers heed the words of mother and of sire. thus daphnis: and menalcas answered thus:- menalcas. o ætna, mother mine! a grotto fair, scooped in the rocks, have i: and there i keep all that in dreams men picture! treasured there are multitudes of she-goats and of sheep, swathed in whose wool from top to toe i sleep. the fire that boils my pot, with oak or beech is piled--dry beech-logs when the snow lies deep; and storm and sunshine, i disdain them each as toothless sires a nut, when broth is in their reach. i clapped applause, and straight produced my gifts: a staff for daphnis--'twas the handiwork of nature, in my father's acres grown: yet might a turner find no fault therewith. i gave his mate a goodly spiral-shell: we stalked its inmate on the icarian rocks and ate him, parted fivefold among five. he blew forthwith the trumpet on his shell. tell, woodland muse--and then farewell--what song i, the chance-comer, sang before those twain. shepherd. ne'er let a falsehood scarify my tongue! crickets with crickets, ants with ants agree, and hawks with hawks: and music sweetly sung, beyond all else, is grateful unto me. filled aye with music may my dwelling be! not slumber, not the bursting forth of spring so charms me, nor the flowers that tempt the bee, as those sweet sisters. he, on whom they fling one gracious glance, is proof to circè's blandishing. idyll x. the two workmen. _milo. battus._ what now, poor o'erworked drudge, is on thy mind? no more in even swathe thou layest the corn: thy fellow-reapers leave thee far behind, as flocks a ewe that's footsore from a thorn. by noon and midday what will be thy plight if now, so soon, thy sickle fails to bite? battus. hewn from hard rocks, untired at set of sun, milo, didst ne'er regret some absent one? milo. not i. what time have workers for regret? battus. hath love ne'er kept thee from thy slumbers yet? milo. nay, heaven forbid! if once the cat taste cream! battus. milo, these ten days love hath been my dream. milo. you drain your wine, while vinegar's scarce with me. battus. --hence since last spring untrimmed my borders be. milo. and what lass flouts thee? battus. she whom we heard play amongst hippocoön's reapers yesterday. milo. your sins have found you out--you're e'en served right: you'll clasp a corn-crake in your arms all night. battus. you laugh: but headstrong love is blind no less than plutus: talking big is foolishness. milo. i talk not big. but lay the corn-ears low and trill the while some love-song--easier so will seem your toil: you used to sing, i know. battus. maids of pieria, of my slim lass sing! one touch of yours ennobles everything. [_sings_] fairy bombyca! thee do men report lean, dusk, a gipsy: i alone nut-brown. violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart, yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown. as goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat, and cranes the ploughman, upon thee i dote. had i but croesus' wealth, we twain should stand gold-sculptured in love's temple; thou, thy lyre (ay or a rose or apple) in thy hand, i in my brave new shoon and dance-attire. fairy bombyca! twinkling dice thy feet, poppies thy lips, thy ways none knows how sweet! milo. who dreamed what subtle strains our bumpkin wrought? how shone the artist in each measured verse! fie on the beard that i have grown for naught! mark, lad, these lines by glorious lytierse. [_sings_] o rich in fruit and cornblade: be this field tilled well, demeter, and fair fruitage yield! bind the sheaves, reapers: lest one, passing, say- 'a fig for these, they're never worth their pay.' let the mown swathes look northward, ye who mow, or westward--for the ears grow fattest so. avoid a noontide nap, ye threshing men: the chaff flies thickest from the corn-ears then. wake when the lark wakes; when he slumbers, close your work, ye reapers: and at noontide doze. boys, the frogs' life for me! they need not him who fills the flagon, for in drink they swim. better boil herbs, thou toiler after gain, than, splitting cummin, split thy hand in twain. strains such as these, i trow, befit them well who toil and moil when noon is at its height: thy meagre love-tale, bumpkin, though shouldst tell thy grandam as she wakes up ere 'tis light. idyll xi. the giant's wooing methinks all nature hath no cure for love, plaster or unguent, nicias, saving one; and this is light and pleasant to a man, yet hard withal to compass--minstrelsy. as well thou wottest, being thyself a leech, and a prime favourite of those sisters nine. 'twas thus our giant lived a life of ease, old polyphemus, when, the down scarce seen on lip and chin, he wooed his ocean nymph: no curlypated rose-and-apple wooer, but a fell madman, blind to all but love. oft from the green grass foldward fared his sheep unbid: while he upon the windy beach, singing his galatea, sat and pined from dawn to dusk, an ulcer at his heart: great aphrodite's shaft had fixed it there. yet found he that one cure: he sate him down on the tall cliff, and seaward looked, and sang:- "white galatea, why disdain thy love? white as a pressed cheese, delicate as the lamb, wild as the heifer, soft as summer grapes! if sweet sleep chain me, here thou walk'st at large; if sweet sleep loose me, straightway thou art gone, scared like a sheep that sees the grey wolf near. i loved thee, maiden, when thou cam'st long since, to pluck the hyacinth-blossom on the fell, thou and my mother, piloted by me. i saw thee, see thee still, from that day forth for ever; but 'tis naught, ay naught, to thee. i know, sweet maiden, why thou art so coy: shaggy and huge, a single eyebrow spans from ear to ear my forehead, whence one eye gleams, and an o'erbroad nostril tops my lip. yet i, this monster, feed a thousand sheep that yield me sweetest draughts at milking-tide: in summer, autumn, or midwinter, still fails not my cheese; my milkpail aye o'erflows. then i can pipe as ne'er did giant yet, singing our loves--ours, honey, thine and mine- at dead of night: and hinds i rear eleven (each with her fawn) and bearcubs four, for thee. oh come to me--thou shalt not rue the day- and let the mad seas beat against the shore! 'twere sweet to haunt my cave the livelong night: laurel, and cypress tall, and ivy dun, and vines of sumptuous fruitage, all are there: and a cold spring that pine-clad ætna flings down from, the white snow's midst, a draught for gods! who would not change for this the ocean-waves? "but thou mislik'st my hair? well, oaken logs are here, and embers yet aglow with fire. burn (if thou wilt) my heart out, and mine eye, mine only eye wherein is my delight. oh why was i not born a finny thing, to float unto thy side and kiss thy hand, denied thy lips--and bring thee lilies white and crimson-petalled poppies' dainty bloom! nay--summer hath his flowers and autumn his; i could not bring all these the selfsame day. lo, should some mariner hither oar his road, sweet, he shall teach me straightway how to swim, that haply i may learn what bliss ye find in your sea-homes. o galatea, come forth from yon waves, and coming forth forget (as i do, sitting here) to get thee home: and feed my flocks and milk them, nothing loth, and pour the rennet in to fix my cheese! "the blame's my mother's; she is false to me; spake thee ne'er yet one sweet word for my sake, though day by day she sees me pine and pine. i'll feign strange throbbings in my head and feet to anguish her--as i am anguished now." o cyclops, cyclops, where are flown thy wits? go plait rush-baskets, lop the olive-boughs to feed thy lambkins--'twere the shrewder part. chase not the recreant, milk the willing ewe: the world hath galateas fairer yet. "--many a fair damsel bids me sport with her the livelong night, and smiles if i give ear. on land at least i still am somebody." thus did the giant feed his love on song, and gained more ease than may be bought with gold. idyll xii. the comrades thou art come, lad, come! scarce thrice hath dusk to day given place--but lovers in an hour grow gray. as spring's more sweet than winter, grapes than thorns, the ewe's fleece richer than her latest-born's; as young girls' charms the thrice-wed wife's outshine, as fawns are lither than the ungainly kine, or as the nightingale's clear notes outvie the mingled music of all birds that fly; so at thy coming passing glad was i. i ran to greet thee e'en as pilgrims run to beechen shadows from the scorching sun: oh if on us accordant loves would breathe, and our two names to future years bequeath! 'these twain'--let men say--'lived in olden days. this was a _yokel_ (in their country-phrase), that was his _mate_ (so talked these simple folk): and lovingly they bore a mutual yoke. the hearts of men were made of sterling gold, when troth met troth, in those brave days of old,' o zeus, o gods who age not nor decay! let e'en two hundred ages roll away, but at the last these tidings let me learn, borne o'er the fatal pool whence none return:- "by every tongue thy constancy is sung, thine and thy favourite's--chiefly by the young." but lo, the future is in heaven's high hand: meanwhile thy graces all my praise demand, not false lip-praise, not idly bubbling froth- for though thy wrath be kindled, e'en thy wrath hath no sting in it: doubly i am caressed, and go my way repaid with interest. oarsmen of megara, ruled by nisus erst! yours be all bliss, because ye honoured first that true child-lover, attic diocles. around his gravestone with the first spring-breeze flock the bairns all, to win the kissing-prize: and whoso sweetliest lip to lip applies goes crown-clad home to its mother. blest is he who in such strife is named the referee: to brightfaced ganymede full oft he'll cry to lend his lip the potencies that lie within that stone with which the usurers detect base metal, and which never errs. idyll xiii. hylas. not for us only, nicias, (vain the dream,) sprung from what god soe'er, was eros born: not to us only grace doth graceful seem, frail things who wot not of the coming morn. no--for amphitryon's iron-hearted son, who braved the lion, was the slave of one:- a fair curled creature, hylas was his name. he taught him, as a father might his child, all songs whereby himself had risen to fame; nor ever from his side would be beguiled when noon was high, nor when white steeds convey back to heaven's gates the chariot of the day, nor when the hen's shrill brood becomes aware of bed-time, as the mother's flapping wings shadow the dust-browned beam. 'twas all his care to shape unto his own imaginings and to the harness train his favourite youth, till he became a man in very truth. meanwhile, when kingly jason steered in quest of the gold fleece, and chieftains at his side chosen from all cities, proffering each her best, to rich iolchos came that warrior tried, and joined him unto trim-built argo's crew; and with alcmena's son came hylas too. through the great gulf shot argo like a bird- and by-and-bye reached phasis, ne'er o'erta'en by those in-rushing rocks, that have not stirred since then, but bask, twin monsters, on the main. but now, when waned the spring, and lambs were fed in far-off fields, and pleiads gleamed overhead, that cream and flower of knighthood looked to sail. they came, within broad argo safely stowed, (when for three days had blown the southern gale) to hellespont, and in propontis rode at anchor, where cianian oxen now broaden the furrows with the busy plough. they leapt ashore, and, keeping rank, prepared their evening meal: a grassy meadow spread before their eyes, and many a warrior shared (thanks to its verdurous stores) one lowly bed. and while they cut tall marigolds from their stem and sworded bulrush, hylas slipt from them. water the fair lad wont to seek and bring to heracles and stalwart telamon, (the comrades aye partook each other's fare,) bearing a brazen pitcher. and anon, where the ground dipt, a fountain he espied, and rushes growing green about its side. there rose the sea-blue swallow-wort, and there the pale-hued maidenhair, with parsley green and vagrant marsh-flowers; and a revel rare in the pool's midst the water-nymphs were seen to hold, those maidens of unslumbrous eyes whom the belated peasant sees and flies. and fast did malis and eunica cling, and young nychea with her april face, to the lad's hand, as stooping o'er the spring he dipt his pitcher. for the young greek's grace made their soft senses reel; and down he fell, all of a sudden, into that black well. so drops a red star suddenly from sky to sea--and quoth some sailor to his mate: "up with the tackle, boy! the breeze is high." him the nymphs pillowed, all disconsolate, on their sweet laps, and with soft words beguiled; but heracles was troubled for the child. forth went he; scythian-wise his bow he bore and the great club that never quits his side; and thrice called 'hylas'--ne'er came lustier roar from that deep chest. thrice hylas heard and tried to answer, but in tones you scarce might hear; the water made them distant though so near. and as a lion, when he hears the bleat of fawns among the mountains far away, a murderous lion, and with hurrying feet bounds from his lair to his predestined prey: so plunged the strong man in the untrodden brake- (lovers are maniacs)--for his darling's sake. he scoured far fields--what hill or oaken glen remembers not that pilgrimage of pain? his troth to jason was forgotten then. long time the good ship tarried for those twain with hoisted sails; night came and still they cleared the hatches, but no heracles appeared. on he was wandering, reckless where he trod, so mad a passion on his vitals preyed: while hylas had become a blessed god. but the crew cursed the runaway who had stayed sixty good oars, and left him there to reach afoot bleak phasis and the colchian beach. idyll xiv. the love of æschines. _thyonichus. æschines._ æschines. hail, sir thyonichus. thyonichus. æschines, to you. æschines. i have missed thee. thyonichus. missed me! why what ails him now? æschines. my friend, i am ill at ease. thyonichus. then this explains thy leanness, and thy prodigal moustache and dried-up curls. thy counterpart i saw, a wan pythagorean, yesterday. he said he came from athens: shoes he had none: he pined, i'll warrant,--for a quartern loaf. æschines. sir, you will joke--but i've been outraged, sore, and by cynisca. i shall go stark mad ere you suspect--a hair would turn the scale. thyonichus. such thou wert always, æschines my friend. in lazy mood or trenchant, at thy whim the world must wag. but what's thy grievance now? æschines. that argive, apis the thessalian knight, myself, and gallant cleonicus, supped within my grounds. two pullets i had slain, and a prime pig: and broached my biblian wine; 'twas four years old, but fragrant as when new. truffles were served to us: and the drink was good. well, we got on, and each must drain a cup to whom he fancied; only each must name. we named, and took our liquor as ordained; but she sate silent--this before my face. fancy my feelings! "wilt not speak? hast seen a wolf?" some wag said. "shrewdly guessed," quoth she, and blushed--her blushes might have fired a torch. a wolf _had_ charmed her: wolf her neighbour's son, goodly and tall, and fair in divers eyes: for his illustrious sake it was she pined. this had been breathed, just idly, in my ear: shame on my beard, i ne'er pursued the hint. well, when we four were deep amid our cups, the knight must sing 'the wolf' (a local song) right through for mischief. all at once she wept hot tears as girls of six years old might weep, clinging and clamouring round their mother's lap. and i, (you know my humour, friend of mine,) drove at his face, one, two! she gathered up her robes and vanished straightway through the door. "and so i fail to please, false lady mine? another lies more welcome in thy lap? go warm that other's heart: he'll say thy tears are liquid pearls." and as a swallow flies forth in a hurry, here or there to find a mouthful for her brood among the eaves: from her soft sofa passing-swift she fled through folding-doors and hall, with random feet: _'the stag had gained his heath':_ you know the rest. three weeks, a month, nine days and ten to that, to-day's the eleventh: and 'tis just two months all but two days, since she and i were two. hence is my beard of more than thracian growth. now wolf is all to her: wolf enters in at midnight; i am a cypher in her eyes; the poor megarian, nowhere in the race. all would go right, if i could once _unlove_: but now, you wot, the rat hath tasted tar. and what may cure a swain at his wit's end i know not: simus, (true,) a mate of mine, loved epichalcus' daughter, and took ship and came home cured. i too will sail the seas. worse men, it may be better, are afloat, i shall still prove an average man-at-arms. thyonichus. now may thy love run smoothly, æschines! but should'st thou really mean a voyage out, the freeman's best paymaster's ptolemy. æschines. what is he else? thyonichus. a gentleman: a man of wit and taste; the top of company; loyal to ladies; one whose eye is keen for friends, and keener still for enemies. large in his bounties, he, in kingly sort, denies a boon to none: but, æschines, one should not ask too often. this premised, if thou wilt clasp the military cloak o'er thy right shoulder, and with legs astride await the onward rush of shielded men: hie thee to egypt. age overtakes us all; our temples first; then on o'er cheek and chin, slowly and surely, creep the frosts of time. up and do somewhat, ere thy limbs are sere. idyll xv. the festival of adonis. _gorgo. praxinoä._ gorgo. praxinoä in? praxinoä. yes, gorgo dear! at last! that you're here now's a marvel! see to a chair, a cushion, eunoä! gorgo. i lack naught. praxinoä. sit down. gorgo. oh, what a thing is spirit! here i am, praxinoä, safe at last from all that crowd and all those chariots--every street a mass of boots and uniforms! and the road, my dear, seemed endless--you live now so far away! praxinoä. this land's-end den--i cannot call it house- my madcap hired to keep us twain apart and stir up strife. 'twas like him, odious pest! gorgo. nay call not, dear, your lord, your deinon, names to the babe's face. look how it stares at you! there, baby dear, she never meant papa! it understands, by'r lady! dear papa! praxinoä. well, yesterday (that means what day you like) 'papa' had rouge and hair-powder to buy; he brought back salt! this oaf of six-foot-one! gorgo. just such another is that pickpocket my diocleides. he bought t'other day six fleeces at seven drachms, his last exploit. what were they? scraps of worn-out pedlar's-bags, sheer trash.--but put your cloak and mantle on; and we'll to ptolemy's, the sumptuous king, to see the _adonis_. as i hear, the queen provides us something gorgeous. praxinoä. ay, the grand can do things grandly. gorgo. when you've seen yourself, what tales you'll have to tell to those who've not. 'twere time we started! praxinoä. all time's holiday with idlers! eunoä, pampered minx, the jug! set it down here--you cats would sleep all day on cushions--stir yourself, fetch water, quick! water's our first want. how she holds the jug! now, pour--not, cormorant, in that wasteful way- you've drenched my dress, bad luck t'you! there, enough: i have made such toilet as my fates allowed. now for the key o' the plate-chest. bring it, quick! gorgo. my dear, that full pelisse becomes you well. what did it stand you in, straight off the loom? praxinoä. don't ask me, gorgo: two good pounds and more. then i gave all my mind to trimming it. gorgo. well, 'tis a great success. praxinoä. i think it is. my mantle, eunoä, and my parasol! arrange me nicely. babe, you'll bide at home! horses would bite you--boo!--yes, cry your fill, but we won't have you maimed. now let's be off. you, phrygia, take and nurse the tiny thing: call the dog in: make fast the outer door! [_exeunt_. gods! what a crowd! how, when shall we get past this nuisance, these unending ant-like swarms? yet, ptolemy, we owe thee thanks for much since heaven received thy sire! no miscreant now creeps thug-like up, to maul the passer-by. what games men played erewhile--men shaped in crime, birds of a feather, rascals every one! --we're done for, gorgo darling--here they are, the royal horse! sweet sir, don't trample me! that bay--the savage!--reared up straight on end! fly, eunoä, can't you? doggedly she stands. he'll be his rider's death!--how glad i am my babe's at home. gorgo. praxinoä, never mind! see, we're before them now, and they're in line. praxinoä. there, i'm myself. but from a child i feared horses, and slimy snakes. but haste we on: a surging multitude is close behind. gorgo [_to old lady_]. from the palace, mother? old lady. ay, child. gorgo. is it fair of access? old lady. trying brought the greeks to troy. young ladies, they must try who would succeed. gorgo. the crone hath said her oracle and gone. women know all--how adam married eve. --praxinoä, look what crowds are round the door! praxinoä. fearful! your hand, please, gorgo. eunoä, you hold eutychis--hold tight or you'll be lost. we'll enter in a body--hold us fast! oh dear, my muslin dress is torn in two, gorgo, already! pray, good gentleman, (and happiness be yours) respect my robe! stranger. i could not if i would--nathless i will. praxinoä. they come in hundreds, and they push like swine. stranger. lady, take courage: it is all well now. praxinoä. and now and ever be it well with thee, sweet man, for shielding us! an honest soul and kindly. oh! they're smothering eunoä: push, coward! that's right! 'all in,' the bridegroom said and locked the door upon himself and bride. gorgo. praxinoä, look! note well this broidery first. how exquisitely fine--too good for earth! empress athenè, what strange sempstress wrought such work? what painter painted, realized such pictures? just like life they stand or move, facts and not fancies! what a thing is man! how bright, how lifelike on his silvern couch lies, with youth's bloom scarce shadowing his cheek, that dear adonis, lovely e'en in death! a stranger. bad luck t'you, cease your senseless pigeon's prate! their brogue is killing--every word a drawl! gorgo. where did he spring from? is our prattle aught to you, sir? order your own slaves about: you're ordering syracusan ladies now! corinthians bred (to tell you one fact more) as was bellerophon: islanders in speech, for dorians may talk doric, i presume? praxinoä. persephonè! none lords it over me, save one! no scullion's-wage for us from _you_! gorgo. hush, dear. the argive's daughter's going to sing _the adonis_: that accomplished vocalist who has no rival in "_the sailor's grave_." observe her attitudinizing now. _song_. queen, who lov'st golgi and the sicel hill and ida; aphroditè radiant-eyed; the stealthy-footed hours from acheron's rill brought once again adonis to thy side how changed in twelve short months! they travel slow, those precious hours: we hail their advent still, for blessings do they bring to all below. o sea-born! thou didst erst, or legend lies, shed on a woman's soul thy grace benign, and berenicè's dust immortalize. o called by many names, at many a shrine! for thy sweet sake doth berenicè's child (herself a second helen) deck with all that's fair, adonis. on his right are piled ripe apples fallen from the oak-tree tall; and silver caskets at his left support toy-gardens, syrian scents enshrined in gold and alabaster, cakes of every sort that in their ovens the pastrywomen mould, when with white meal they mix all flowers that bloom, oil-cakes and honey-cakes. there stand portrayed each bird, each butterfly; and in the gloom of foliage climbing high, and downward weighed by graceful blossoms, do the young loves play like nightingales, and perch on every tree, and flit, to try their wings, from spray to spray. then see the gold, the ebony! only see the ivory-carven eagles, bearing up to zeus the boy who fills his royal cup! soft as a dream, such tapestry gleams o'erhead as the milesian's self would gaze on, charmed. but sweet adonis hath his own sweet bed: next aphroditè sleeps the roseate-armed, a bridegroom of eighteen or nineteen years. kiss the smooth boyish lip--there's no sting there! the bride hath found her own: all bliss be hers! and him at dewy dawn we'll troop to bear down where the breakers hiss against the shore: there, with dishevelled dress and unbound hair, bare-bosomed all, our descant wild we'll pour: "thou haunt'st, adonis, earth and heaven in turn, alone of heroes. agamemnon ne'er could compass this, nor aias stout and stern: not hector, eldest-born of her who bare ten sons, not patrocles, nor safe-returned from ilion pyrrhus, such distinction earned: nor, elder yet, the lapithæ, the sons of pelops and deucalion; or the crown of greece, pelasgians. gracious may'st thou be, adonis, now: pour new-year's blessings down! right welcome dost thou come, adonis dear: come when thou wilt, thou'lt find a welcome here." gorgo. 'tis fine, praxinoä! how i envy her her learning, and still more her luscious voice! we must go home: my husband's supperless: and, in that state, the man's just vinegar. don't cross his path when hungry! so farewell, adonis, and be housed 'mid welfare aye! idyll xvi. the value of song. what fires the muse's, what the minstrel's lays? hers some immortal's, ours some hero's praise, heaven is her theme, as heavenly was her birth: we, of earth earthy, sing the sons of earth. yet who, of all that see the gray morn rise, lifts not his latch and hails with eager eyes my songs, yet sends them guerdonless away? barefoot and angry homeward journey they, taunt him who sent them on that idle quest, then crouch them deep within their empty chest, (when wageless they return, their dismal bed) and hide on their chill knees once more their patient head. where are those good old times? who thanks us, who, for our good word? men list not now to do great deeds and worthy of the minstrel's verse: vassals of gain, their hand is on their purse, their eyes on lucre: ne'er a rusty nail they'll give in kindness; this being aye their tale:- "kin before kith; to prosper is my prayer; poets, we know, are heaven's peculiar care. we've homer; and what other's worth a thought? i call him chief of bards who costs me naught." yet what if all your chests with gold are lined? is this enjoying wealth? oh fools and blind! part on your heart's desire, on minstrels spend part; and your kindred and your kind befriend: and daily to the gods bid altar-fires ascend. nor be ye churlish hosts, but glad the heart of guests with wine, when they must needs depart: and reverence most the priests of sacred song: so, when hell hides you, shall your names live long; not doomed to wail on acheron's sunless sands, like some poor hind, the inward of whose hands the spade hath gnarled and knotted, born to groan, poor sire's poor offspring, hapless penury's own! their monthly dole erewhile unnumbered thralls sought in antiochus', in aleuas' halls; on to the scopadæ's byres in endless line the calves ran lowing with the hornèd kine; and, marshalled by the good creondæ's swains myriads of choice sheep basked on cranron's plains. yet had their joyaunce ended, on the day when their sweet spirit dispossessed its clay, to hated acheron's ample barge resigned. nameless, their stored-up luxury left behind, with the lorn dead through ages had they lain, had not a minstrel bade them live again:- had not in woven words the ceïan sire holding sweet converse with his full-toned lyre made even their swift steeds for aye renowned, when from the sacred lists they came home crowned. forgot were lycia's chiefs, and hector's hair of gold, and cycnus femininely fair; but that bards bring old battles back to mind. odysseus--he who roamed amongst mankind a hundred years and more, reached utmost hell alive, and 'scaped the giant's hideous cell- had lived and died: eumæus and his swine; philoetius, busy with his herded kine; and great laërtes' self, had passed away, were not their names preserved in homer's lay. through song alone may man true glory taste; the dead man's riches his survivors waste. but count the waves, with yon gray wind-swept main borne shoreward: from a red brick wash his stain in some pool's violet depths: 'twill task thee yet to reach the heart on baleful avarice set. to such i say 'fare well': let theirs be store of wealth; but let them always crave for more: horses and mules inferior things _i_ find to the esteem and love of all mankind. but to what mortal's roof may i repair, i and my muse, and find a welcome there? i and my muse: for minstrels fare but ill, reft of those maids, who know the mightiest's will. the cycle of the years, it flags not yet; in many a chariot many a steed shall sweat: and one, to manhood grown, my lays shall claim, whose deeds shall rival great achilles' fame, who from stout aias might have won the prize on simois' plain, where phrygian ilus lies. now, in their sunset home on libya's heel, phoenicia's sons unwonted chillness feel: now, with his targe of willow at his breast, the syracusan bears his spear in rest, amongst these hiero arms him for the war, eager to fight as warriors fought of yore; the plumes float darkling o'er his helmèd brow. o zeus, the sire most glorious; and o thou, empress athenè; and thou, damsel fair, who with thy mother wast decreed to bear rule o'er rich corinth, o'er that city of pride beside whose walls anapus' waters glide:- may ill winds waft across the southern sea (of late a legion, now but two or three,) far from our isle, our foes; the doom to tell, to wife and child, of those they loved so well; while the old race enjoy once more the lands spoiled and insulted erst by alien hands! and fair and fruitful may their cornlands be! their flocks in thousands bleat upon the lea, fat and full-fed; their kine, as home they wind, the lagging traveller of his rest remind! with might and main their fallows let them till: till comes the seedtime, and cicalas trill (hid from the toilers of the hot midday in the thick leafage) on the topmost spray! o'er shield and spear their webs let spiders spin, and none so much as name the battle-din! then hiero's lofty deeds may minstrels bear beyond the scythian ocean-main, and where within those ample walls, with asphalt made time-proof, semiramis her empire swayed. i am but a single voice: but many a bard beside me do those heavenly maids regard: may those all love to sing, 'mid earth's acclaim, of sicel arethuse, and hiero's fame. o graces, royal nurselings, who hold dear the minyæ's city, once the theban's fear: unbidden i tarry, whither bidden i fare my muse my comrade. and be ye too there, sisters divine! were ye and song forgot, what grace had earth? with you be aye my lot! idyll xvii. the praise of ptolemy. with zeus begin, sweet sisters, end with zeus, when ye would sing the sovereign of the skies: but first among mankind rank ptolemy; first, last, and midmost; being past compare. those mighty ones of old, half men half gods, wrought deeds that shine in many a subtle strain; i, no unpractised minstrel, sing but him; divinest ears disdain not minstrelsy. but as a woodman sees green ida rise pine above pine, and ponders which to fell first of those myriads; even so i pause where to begin the chapter of his praise: for thousand and ten thousand are the gifts wherewith high heaven hath graced the kingliest king. was not he born to compass noblest ends, lagus' own son, so soon as he matured schemes such as ne'er had dawned on meaner minds? zeus doth esteem him as the blessèd gods; in the sire's courts his golden mansion stands. and near him alexander sits and smiles, the turbaned persian's dread; and, fronting both, rises the stedfast adamantine seat erst fashioned for the bull-slayer heracles. who there holds revels with his heavenly mates, and sees, with joy exceeding, children rise on children; for that zeus exempts from age and death their frames who sprang from heracles: and ptolemy, like alexander, claims from him; his gallant son their common sire. and when, the banquet o'er, the strong man wends, cloyed with rich nectar, home unto his wife, this kinsman hath in charge his cherished shafts and bow; and that his gnarled and knotted club; and both to white-limbed hebè's bower of bliss convoy the bearded warrior and his arms. then how among wise ladies--blest the pair that reared her!--peerless berenicè shone! dionè's sacred child, the cyprian queen, o'er that sweet bosom passed her taper hands: and hence, 'tis said, no man loved woman e'er as ptolemy loved her. she o'er-repaid his love; so, nothing doubting, he could leave his substance in his loyal children's care, and rest with her, fond husband with fond wife. she that loves not bears sons, but all unlike their father: for her heart was otherwhere. o aphroditè, matchless e'en in heaven for beauty, thou didst love her; wouldst not let thy berenicè cross the wailful waves: but thy hand snatched her--to the blue lake bound else, and the dead's grim ferryman--and enshrined with thee, to share thy honours. there she sits, to mortals ever kind, and passion soft inspires, and makes the lover's burden light. the dark-browed argive, linked with tydeus, bare diomed the slayer, famed in calydon: and deep-veiled thetis unto peleus gave the javelineer achilles. thou wast born of berenicè, ptolemy by name and by descent, a warrior's warrior child. cos from its mother's arms her babe received, its destined nursery, on its natal day: 'twas there antigonè's daughter in her pangs cried to the goddess that could bid them cease: who soon was at her side, and lo! her limbs forgat their anguish, and a child was born fair, its sire's self. cos saw, and shouted loud; handled the babe all tenderly, and spake: "wake, babe, to bliss: prize me, as phoebus doth his azure-spherèd delos: grace the hill of triops, and the dorians' sister shores, as king apollo his rhenæa's isle." so spake the isle. an eagle high overhead poised in the clouds screamed thrice, the prophet-bird of zeus, and sent by him. for awful kings all are his care, those chiefliest on whose birth he smiled: exceeding glory waits on them: theirs is the sovereignty of land and sea. but if a myriad realms spread far and wide o'er earth, if myriad nations till the soil to which heaven's rain gives increase: yet what land is green as low-lying egypt, when the nile wells forth and piecemeal breaks the sodden glebe? where are like cities, peopled by like men? lo he hath seen three hundred towns arise, three thousand, yea three myriad; and o'er all he rules, the prince of heroes, ptolemy. claims half phoenicia, and half araby, syria and libya, and the æthiops murk; sways the pamphylian and cilician braves, the lycian and the carian trained to war, and all the isles: for never fleet like his rode upon ocean: land and sea alike and sounding rivers hail king ptolemy. many are his horsemen, many his targeteers, whose burdened breast is bright with clashing steel: light are all royal treasuries, weighed with his. for wealth from all climes travels day by day to his rich realm, a hive of prosperous peace. no foeman's tramp scares monster-peopled nile, waking to war her far-off villages: no armed robber from his war-ship leaps to spoil the herds of egypt. such a prince sits throned in her broad plains, in whose right arm quivers the spear, the bright-haired ptolemy. like a true king, he guards with might and main the wealth his sires' arm won him and his own. nor strown all idly o'er his sumptuous halls lie piles that seem the work of labouring ants. the holy homes of gods are rich therewith; theirs are the firstfruits, earnest aye of more. and freely mighty kings thereof partake, freely great cities, freely honoured friends. none entered e'er the sacred lists of song, whose lips could breathe sweet music, but he gained fair guerdon at the hand of ptolemy. and ptolemy do music's votaries hymn for his good gifts--hath man a fairer lot than to have earned much fame among mankind? the atridæ's name abides, while all the wealth won from the sack of priam's stately home a mist closed o'er it, to be seen no more. ptolemy, he only, treads a path whose dust burns with the footprints of his ancestors, and overlays those footprints with his own. he raised rich shrines to mother and to sire, there reared their forms in ivory and gold, passing in beauty, to befriend mankind. thighs of fat oxen oftentimes he burns on crimsoning altars, as the months roll on, ay he and his staunch wife. no fairer bride e'er clasped her lord in royal palaces: and her heart's love her brother-husband won. in such blest union joined the immortal pair whom queenly rhea bore, and heaven obeys: one couch the maiden of the rainbow decks with myrrh-dipt hands for hera and for zeus. now farewell, prince! i rank thee aye with gods: and read this lesson to the afterdays, mayhap they'll prize it: 'honour is of zeus.' idyll xviii. the bridal of helen. whilom, in lacedæmon, tript many a maiden fair to gold-tressed menelaus' halls, with hyacinths in her hair: twelve to the painted chamber, the queenliest in the land, the clustered loveliness of greece, came dancing hand in hand. for helen, tyndarus' daughter, had just been wooed and won, helen the darling of the world, by atreus' younger son: with woven steps they beat the floor in unison, and sang their bridal-hymn of triumph till all the palace rang. "slumberest so soon, sweet bridegroom? art thou o'erfond of sleep? or hast thou leadenweighted limbs? or hadst thou drunk too deep when thou didst fling thee to thy lair? betimes thou should'st have sped, if sleep were all thy purpose, unto thy bachelor's bed: and left her in her mother's arms to nestle, and to play a girl among her girlish mates till deep into the day:- for not alone for this night, nor for the next alone, but through the days and through the years thou hast her for thine own. "nay! heaven, o happy bridegroom, smiled as thou enteredst in to sparta, like thy brother kings, and told thee thou should'st win! what hero son-in-law of zeus hath e'er aspired to be? yet lo! one coverlet enfolds the child of zeus, and thee. ne'er did a thing so lovely roam the achaian lea. "and who shall match her offspring, if babes are like their mother? for we were playmates once, and ran and raced with one another (all varnished, warrior fashion) along eurotas' tide, thrice eighty gentle maidens, each in her girlhood's pride: yet none of all seemed faultless, if placed by helen's side. "as peers the nascent morning over thy shades, o night, when winter disenchains the land, and spring goes forth in white: so helen shone above us, all loveliness and light. "as climbs aloft some cypress, garden or glade to grace; as the thessalian courser lends a lustre to the race: so bright o'er lacedæmon shone helen's rosebud face. "and who into the basket e'er the yarn so deftly drew, or through the mazes of the web so well the shuttle threw, and severed from the framework as closelywov'n a warp:- and who could wake with masterhand such music from the harp, to broadlimbed pallas tuning and artemis her lay- as helen, helen in whose eyes the loves for ever play? "o bright, o beautiful, for thee are matron-cares begun. we to green paths and blossomed meads with dawn of morn must run, and cull a breathing chaplet; and still our dream shall be, helen, of thee, as weanling lambs yearn in the pasture for the dams that nursed their infancy. "for thee the lowly lotus-bed we'll spoil, and plait a crown to hang upon the shadowy plane; for thee will we drop down ('neath that same shadowy platan) oil from our silver urn; and carven on the bark shall be this sentence, 'hallow helen's tree'; in dorian letters, legibly for all men to discern. "now farewell, bride, and bridegroom blest in thy new-found sire! may leto, mother of the brave, bring babes at your desire, and holy cypris either's breast with mutual transport fire: and zeus the son of cronos grant blessings without end, from princely sire to princely son for ever to descend. "sleep on, and love and longing breathe in each other's breast; but fail not when the morn returns to rouse you from your rest: with dawn shall we be stirring, when, lifting high his fair and feathered neck, the earliest bird to clarion to the dawn is heard. o god of brides and bridals, sing 'happy, happy pair!'" idyll xix. love stealing honey. once thievish love the honeyed hives would rob, when a bee stung him: soon he felt a throb through all his finger-tips, and, wild with pain, blew on his hands and stamped and jumped in vain. to aphroditè then he told his woe: 'how can a thing so tiny hurt one so?' she smiled and said; 'why thou'rt a tiny thing, as is the bee; yet sorely thou canst sting.' idyll xx. town and country once i would kiss eunicè. "back," quoth she, and screamed and stormed; "a sorry clown kiss me? your country compliments, i like not such; no lips but gentles' would i deign to touch. ne'er dream of kissing me: alike i shun your face, your language, and your tigerish fun. how winning are your tones, how fine your air! your beard how silken and how sweet your hair! pah! you've a sick man's lips, a blackamoor's hand: your breath's defilement. leave me, i command." thrice spat she on her robe, and, muttering low, scanned me, with half-shut eyes, from top to toe: brought all her woman's witcheries into play, still smiling in a set sarcastic way, till my blood boiled, my visage crimson grew with indignation, as a rose with dew: and so she left me, inly to repine that such as she could flout such charms as mine. o shepherds, tell me true! am i not fair? am i transformed? for lately i did wear grace as a garment; and my cheeks, o'er them ran the rich growth like ivy round the stem. like fern my tresses o'er my temples streamed; o'er my dark eyebrows, white my forehead gleamed: my eyes were of athenè's radiant blue, my mouth was milk, its accents honeydew. then i could sing--my tones were soft indeed!- to pipe or flute or flageolet or reed: and me did every maid that roams the fell kiss and call fair: not so this city belle. she scorns the herdsman; knows not how divine bacchus ranged once the valleys with his kine; how cypris, maddened for a herdsman's sake, deigned upon phrygia's mountains to partake his cares: and wooed, and wept, adonis in the brake. what was endymion, sweet selenè's love? a herdsman's lad. yet came she from above, down to green latmos, by his side to sleep. and did not rhea for a herdsman weep? didst not thou, zeus, become a wandering bird, to win the love of one who drove a herd? selenè, cybelè, cypris, all loved swains: eunicè, loftier-bred, their kiss disdains. henceforth, by hill or hall, thy love disown, cypris, and sleep the livelong night alone. idyll xxi. the fishermen. _asphalion, a comrade._ want quickens wit: want's pupils needs must work, o diophantus: for the child of toil is grudged his very sleep by carking cares: or, if he taste the blessedness of night, thought for the morrow soon warns slumber off. two ancient fishers once lay side by side on piled-up sea-wrack in their wattled hut, its leafy wall their curtain. near them lay the weapons of their trade, basket and rod, hooks, weed-encumbered nets, and cords and oars, and, propped on rollers, an infirm old boat. their pillow was a scanty mat, eked out with caps and garments: such the ways and means, such the whole treasury of the fishermen. they knew no luxuries: owned nor door nor dog; their craft their all, their mistress poverty: their only neighbour ocean, who for aye bound their lorn hut came floating lazily. ere the moon's chariot was in mid-career, the fishers girt them for their customed toil, and banished slumber from unwilling eyes, and roused their dreamy intellects with speech:- asphalion. "they say that soon flit summer-nights away, because all lingering is the summer day: friend, it is false; for dream on dream have i dreamed, and the dawn still reddens not the sky. how? am i wandering? or does night pass slow?" his comrade. "asphalion, scout not the sweet summer so. 'tis not that wilful seasons have gone wrong, but care maims slumber, and the nights seem long." asphalion. "didst thou e'er study dreams? for visions fair i saw last night; and fairly thou should'st share the wealth i dream of, as the fish i catch. now, for sheer sense, i reckon few thy match; and, for a vision, he whose motherwit is his sole tutor best interprets it. and now we've time the matter to discuss: for who could labour, lying here (like us) pillowed on leaves and neighboured by the deep, or sleeping amid thorns no easy sleep? in rich men's halls the lamps are burning yet; but fish come alway to the rich man's net." comrade. "to me the vision of the night relate; speak, and reveal the riddle to thy mate." asphalion. "last evening, as i plied my watery trade, (not on an o'erfull stomach--we had made betimes a meagre meal, as you can vouch,) i fell asleep; and lo! i seemed to crouch among the boulders, and for fish to wait, still dangling, rod in hand, my vagrant bait. a fat fellow caught it: (e'en in sleep i'm bound to dream of fishing, as of crusts the hound:) fast clung he to the hooks; his blood outwelled; bent with his struggling was the rod i held: i tugged and tugged: my efforts made me ache: 'how, with a line thus slight, this monster take?' then gently, just to warn him he was caught, i twitched him once; then slacked and then made taut my line, for now he offered not to ran; a glance soon showed me all my task was done. 'twas a gold fish, pure metal every inch that i had captured. i began to flinch: 'what if this beauty be the sea-king's joy, or azure amphitritè's treasured toy!' with care i disengaged him--not to rip with hasty hook the gilding from his lip: and with a tow-line landed him, and swore never to set my foot on ocean more, but with my gold live royally ashore. so i awoke: and, comrade, lend me now thy wits, for i am troubled for my vow." comrade. "ne'er quake: you're pledged to nothing, for no prize you gained or gazed on. dreams are nought but lies. yet may this dream bear fruit; if, wide-awake and not in dreams, you'll fish the neighbouring lake. fish that are meat you'll there mayhap behold, not die of famine, amid dreams of gold." idyll xxii. the sons of leda the pair i sing, that ægis-armèd zeus gave unto leda; castor and the dread of bruisers polydeuces, whensoe'er his harnessed hands were lifted for the fray. twice and again i sing the manly sons of leda, those twin brethren, sparta's own: who shield the soldier on the deadly scarp, the horse wild-plunging o'er the crimson field, the ship that, disregarding in her pride star-set and star-rise, meets disastrous gales:- such gales as pile the billows mountain-high, e'en at their own wild will, round stem or stern: dash o'er the hold, the timbers rive in twain, till mast and tackle dangle in mid-air shivered like toys, and, as the night wears on, the rain of heaven falls fast, and, lashed by wind and iron hail, broad ocean rings again. then can they draw from out the nether abyss both craft and crew, each deeming he must die: lo the winds cease, and o'er the burnished deep comes stillness; this way flee the clouds and that; and shine out clear the great bear and the less, and, 'twixt the asses dimly seen, the crib foretells fair voyage to the mariner. o saviours, o companions of mankind, matchless on horse or harp, in lists or lay; which of ye twain demands my earliest song? of both i sing; of polydeuces first. argo, escaped the two inrushing rocks, and snow-clad pontus with his baleful jaws, came to bebrycia with her heaven-sprung freight; there by one ladder disembarked a host of heroes from the decks of jason's ship. on the low beach, to leeward of the cliff, they leapt, and piled their beds, and lit their fires: castor meanwhile, the bridler of the steed, and polydeuces of the nut-brown face, had wandered from their mates; and, wildered both, searched through the boskage of the hill, and found hard by a slab of rock a bubbling spring brimful of purest water. in the depths below, like crystal or like silver gleamed the pebbles: high above it pine and plane and poplar rose, and cypress tipt with green; with all rich flowers that throng the mead, when wanes the spring, sweet workshops of the furry bee. there sat and sunned him one of giant bulk and grisly mien: hard knocks had stov'n his ears: broad were his shoulders, vast his orbèd chest; like a wrought statue rose his iron frame: and nigh the shoulder on each brawny arm stood out the muscles, huge as rolling stones caught by some rain-swoln river and shapen smooth by its wild eddyings: and o'er nape and spine hung, balanced by the claws, a lion's skin. him leda's conquering son accosted first:- polydeuces. luck to thee, friend unknown! who own this shore? amycus. luck, quotha, to see men ne'er seen before! polydeuces. fear not, no base or base-born herd are we. amycus. nothing i fear, nor need learn this from thee. polydeuces. what art thou? brutish churl, or o'erproud king? amycus. e'en what thou see'st: and i am not trespassing. polydeuces. visit our land, take gifts from us, and go. amycus. i seek naught from thee and can naught bestow. polydeuces. not e'en such grace as from yon spring to sip? amycus. try, if parched thirst sits languid on thy lip. polydeuces. can silver move thee? or if not, what can? amycus. stand up and fight me singly, man with man. polydeuces. with fists? or fist and foot, eye covering eye? amycus. fall to with fists; and all thy cunning try. polydeuces. this arm, these gauntlets, who shall dare withstand? amycus. i: and "the bruiser" lifts no woman's-hand. polydeuces. wilt thou, to crown our strife, some meed assign? amycus. thou shalt be called my master, or i thine. polydeuces. by crimson-crested cocks such games are won. amycus. lions or cocks, we'll play this game or none. he spoke, and clutched a hollow shell, and blew his clarion. straightway to the shadowy pine clustering they came, as loud it pealed and long, bebrycia's bearded sons; and castor too, the peerless in the lists, went forth and called from the magnesian ship the heroes all. then either warrior armed with coils of hide his hands, and round his limbs bound ponderous bands, and, breathing bloodshed, stept into the ring. first there was much manoeuvring, who should catch the sunlight on his rear: but thou didst foil, o polydeuces, valour by address; and full on amycus' face the hot noon smote. he in hot wrath strode forward, threatening war; straightway the tyndarid smote him, as he closed, full on the chin: more furious waxed he still, and, earthward bent, dealt blindly random blows. bebrycia shouted loud, the greeks too cheered their champion: fearing lest in that scant space this tityus by sheer weight should bear him down. but, shifting yet still there, the son of zeus scored him with swift exchange of left and right, and checked the onrush of the sea-god's child parlous albeit: till, reeling with his wounds, he stood, and from his lips spat crimson blood. cheered yet again the princes, when they saw the lips and jowl all seamed with piteous scars, and the swoln visage and the half-closed eyes. still the prince teased him, feinting here or there a thrust; and when he saw him helpless all, let drive beneath his eyelids at his nose, and laid it bare to the bone. the stricken man measured his length supine amid the fern. keen was the fighting when he rose again, deadly the blows their sturdy gauntlets dealt. but while bebrycia's chieftain sparred round chest and utmost shoulder, the resistless foe made his whole face one mass of hideous wounds. while the one sweated all his bulk away, and, late a giant, seemed a pigmy now, the other's limbs waxed ever as he fought in semblance and in size. but in what wise the child of zeus brought low that man of greed, tell, muse, for thine is knowledge: i unfold a secret not mine own; at thy behest speak or am dumb, nor speak but as thou wilt. amycus, athirst to do some doughty deed, stooping aslant from polydeuces' lunge locked their left hands; and, stepping out, upheaved from his right hip his ponderous other-arm. and hit and harmed had been amyclæ's king; but, ducking low, he smote with one stout fist the foe's left temple--fast the life-blood streamed from the grim rift--and on his shoulder fell. while with his left he reached the mouth, and made the set teeth tingle; and, redoubling aye his plashing blows, made havoc of his face and crashed into his cheeks, till all abroad he lay, and throwing up his arms disclaimed the strife, for he was even at death's door. no wrong the vanquished suffered at thy hands, o polydeuces; but he sware an oath, calling his sire poseidon from the depths, ne'er to do violence to a stranger more. thy tale, o prince, is told. now sing i thee, castor the tyndarid, lord of rushing horse and shaking javelin, corsleted in brass. part ii. the sons of zeus had borne two maids away, leucippus' daughters. straight in hot pursuit went the two brethren, sons of aphareus, lynceus and idas bold, their plighted lords. and when the tomb of aphareus was gained, all leapt from out their cars, and front to front stood, with their ponderous spears and orbed shields. first lynceus shouted loud from 'neath his helm: "whence, sirs, this lust for strife? why, sword in hand, raise ye this coil about your neighbours' wives? to us leucippus these his daughters gave, long ere ye saw them: they are ours on oath. ye, coveting (to your shame) your neighbour's bed and kine and asses and whatever is his, suborned the man and stole our wives by bribes. how often spake i thus before your face, yea i myself, though scant i am of phrase: 'not thus, fair sirs, do honourable men seek to woo wives whose troth is given elsewhere. lo, broad is sparta, broad the hunting-grounds of elis: fleecy arcady is broad, and argos and messene and the towns to westward, and the long sisyphian reach. there 'neath her parents' roof dwells many a maid second to none in godliness or wit: wed of all these, and welcome, whom ye will, for all men court the kinship of the brave; and ye are as your sires, and they whose blood runs in your mother's veins, the flower of war. nay, sirs, but let us bring this thing to pass; then, taking counsel, choose meet brides for you.' so i ran on; but o'er the shifting seas the wind's breath blew my words, that found no grace with you, for ye defied the charmer's voice. yet listen to me now if ne'er before: lo! we are kinsmen by the father's side. but if ye lust for war, if strife must break forth among kin, and bloodshed quench our feud, bold polydeuces then shall hold his hands and his cousin idas from the abhorrèd fray: while i and castor, the two younger-born, try war's arbitrament; so spare our sires sorrow exceeding. in one house one dead sufficeth: let the others glad their mates, to the bride-chamber passing, not the grave, and o'er yon maids sing jubilee. well it were at cost so small to lay so huge a strife." he spoke--his words heaven gave not to the winds. they, the two first-born, disarrayed and piled their arms, while lynceus stept into the ring, and at his shield's rim shook his stalwart spear. and castor likewise poised his quivering lance; high waved the plume on either warrior's helm. first each at other thrust with busy spear where'er he spied an inch of flesh exposed: but lo! both spearpoints in their wicker shields lodged ere a blow was struck, and snapt in twain. then they unsheathed their swords, and framed new modes of slaughter: pause or respite there was none. oft castor on broad shield and plumèd helm lit, and oft keen-eyed lynceus pierced his shield, or grazed his crest of crimson. but anon, as lynceus aimed his blade at castor's knee, back with the left sprang castor and struck off his fingers: from the maimed limb dropped the sword. and, flying straightway, for his father's tomb he made, where gallant idas sat and saw the battle of the brethren. but the child of zeus rushed in, and with his broadsword drave through flank and navel, sundering with swift stroke his vitals: lynceus tottered and he fell, and o'er his eyelids rushed the dreamless sleep. nor did their mother see her elder son come a fair bridegroom to his cretan home. for idas wrenched from off the dead man's tomb a jutting slab, to hurl it at the man who had slain his brother. then did zeus bring aid, and struck the marble fabric from his grasp, and with red lightning burned his frame to dust. so doth he fight with odds who dares provoke the tyndarids, mighty sons of mighty sire. now farewell, leda's children: prosper aye the songs i sing. what minstrel loves not well the tyndarids, and helen, and the chiefs that trod troy down for meneläus' sake? the bard of chios wrought your royal deeds into his lays, who sang of priam's state, and fights 'neath ilion's walls; of sailor greeks, and of achilles towering in the strife. yet take from me whate'er of clear sweet song the muse accords me, even all my store! the gods' most precious gift is minstrelsy. idyll xxiii. love avenged a lad deep-dipt in passion pined for one whose mood was froward as her face was fair. lovers she loathed, for tenderness she had none: ne'er knew what love was like, nor how he bare a bow, and arrows to make young maids smart: proof to all speech, all access, seemed her heart. so he found naught his furnace to allay; no quiver of lips, no lighting of kind eyes, nor rose-flushed cheek; no talk, no lover's play was deigned him: but as forest-beasts are shy of hound and hunter, with this wight dealt she; fierce was her lip, her eyes gleamed ominously. her tyrant's-heart was imaged in her face, that flushed, then altering put on blank disdain. yet, even then, her anger had its grace, and made her lover fall in love again. at last, unable to endure his flame, to the fell threshold all in tears he came: kissed it, and lifted up his voice and said: "o heart of stone, o curst and cruel maid unworthy of all love, by lions bred, see, my last offering at thy feet is laid, the halter that shall hang me! so no more for my sake, lady, need thy heart be sore. whither thou doom'st me, thither must i fare. there is a path, that whoso treads hath ease (men say) from love; forgetfulness is there. but if i drain that chalice to the lees, i may not quench the love i have for you; now at your gates i cast my long adieu. your future i foresee. the rose is gay, and passing-sweet the violet of the spring: yet time despoils them, and they soon decay. the lily droops and dies, that lustrous thing; the solid-seeming snowdrift melts full fast; and maiden's bloom is rare, but may not last. the time shall come, when you shall feel as i; and, with seared heart, weep many a bitter tear. but, maiden, grant one farewell courtesy. when you come forth, and see me hanging here, e'en at your door, forget not my hard case; but pause and weep me for a moment's space. and drop one tear, and cut me down, and spread o'er me some garment, for a funeral pall, that wrapped thy limbs: and kiss me--let the dead be privileged thus highly--last of all. you need not fear me: not if your disdain changed into fondness could i live again. and scoop a grave, to hide my loves and me: and thrice, at parting, say, 'my friend's no more:' add if you list, 'a faithful friend was he;' and write this epitaph, scratched upon your door: _stranger, love slew him. pass not by, until thou hast paused and said, 'his mistress used him ill_.'" this said, he grasped a stone: that ghastly stone at the mid threshold 'neath the wall he laid, and o'er the beam the light cord soon was thrown, and his neck noosed. in air the body swayed, its footstool spurned away. forth came once more the maid, and saw him hanging at her door. no struggle of heart it cost her, ne'er a tear she wept o'er that young life, nor shunned to soil, by contact with the corpse, her woman's-gear. but on she went to watch the athletes' toil, then made for her loved haunt, the riverside: and there she met the god she had defied. for on a marble pedestal eros stood fronting the pool: the statue leaped, and smote and slew that miscreant. all the stream ran blood; and to the top a girl's cry seemed to float. rejoice, o lovers, since the scorner fell; and, maids, be kind; for love deals justice well. idyll xxiv. the infant heracles. alcmena once had washed and given the breast to heracles, a babe of ten months old, and iphicles his junior by a night; and cradled both within a brazen shield, a gorgeous trophy, which amphitryon erst had stript from ptereläus fall'n in fight. she stroked their baby brows, and thus she said: "sleep, children mine, a light luxurious sleep, brother with brother: sleep, my boys, my life: blest in your slumber, in your waking blest!" she spake and rocked the shield; and in his arms sleep took them. but at midnight, when the bear wheels to his setting, in orion's front whose shoulder then beams broadest; hera sent, mistress of wiles, two huge and hideous things, snakes with their scales of azure all on end, to the broad portal of the chamber-door, all to devour the infant heracles. they, all their length uncoiled upon the floor, writhed on to their blood-feast; a baleful light gleamed in their eyes, rank venom they spat forth. but when with lambent tongues they neared the cot, alcmena's babes (for zeus was watching all) woke, and throughout the chamber there was light. then iphicles--so soon as he descried the fell brutes peering o'er the hollow shield, and saw their merciless fangs--cried lustily, and kicked away his coverlet of down, fain to escape. but heracles, he clung round them with warlike hands, in iron grasp prisoning the two: his clutch upon their throat, the deadly snake's laboratory, where he brews such poisons as e'en heaven abhors. they twined and twisted round the babe that, born after long travail, ne'er had shed a tear e'en in his nursery; soon to quit their hold, for powerless seemed their spines. alcmena heard, while her lord slept, the crying, and awoke. "amphitryon, up: chill fears take hold on me. up: stay not to put sandals on thy feet. hear'st thou our child, our younger, how he cries? seest thou yon walls illumed at dead of night, but not by morn's pure beam? i know, i know, sweet lord, that some strange thing is happening here." she spake; and he, upleaping at her call, made swiftly for the sword of quaint device that aye hung dangling o'er his cedarn couch: and he was reaching at his span-new belt, the scabbard (one huge piece of lotus-wood) poised on his arm; when suddenly the night spread out her hands, and all was dark again. then cried he to his slaves, whose sleep was deep: "quick, slaves of mine; fetch fire from yonder hearth: and force with all your strength the doorbolts back! up, loyal-hearted slaves: the master calls." forth came at once the slaves with lighted lamps. the house was all astir with hurrying feet. but when they saw the suckling heracles with the two brutes grasped firm in his soft hands, they shouted with one voice. but he must show the reptiles to amphitryon; held aloft his hands in childish glee, and laughed and laid at his sire's feet the monsters still in death. then did alcmena to her bosom take the terror-blanched and passionate iphicles: cradling the other in a lambswool quilt, her lord once more bethought him of his rest. now cocks had thrice sung out that night was e'er. then went alcmena forth and told the thing to teiresias the seer, whose words were truth, and bade him rede her what the end should be:- 'and if the gods bode mischief, hide it not, pitying, from me: man shall not thus avoid the doom that fate upon her distaff spins. son of eueres, thou hast ears to hear.' thus spake the queen, and thus he made reply: "mother of monarchs, perseus' child, take heart; and look but on the fairer side of things. for by the precious light that long ago left tenantless these eyes, i swear that oft achaia's maidens, as when eve is high they mould the silken yarn upon their lap, shall tell alcmena's story: blest art thou of women. such a man in this thy son shall one day scale the star-encumbered heaven: his amplitude of chest bespeaks him lord of all the forest beasts and all mankind. twelve tasks accomplished he must dwell with zeus; his flesh given over to trachinian fires; and son-in-law be hailed of those same gods who sent yon skulking brutes to slay thy babe. lo! the day cometh when the fawn shall couch in the wolfs lair, nor fear the spiky teeth that would not harm him. but, o lady, keep yon smouldering fire alive; prepare you piles of fuel, bramble-sprays or fern or furze or pear-boughs dried with swinging in the wind: and let the kindled wild-wood burn those snakes at midnight, when they looked to slay thy babe. and let at dawn some handmaid gather up the ashes of the fire, and diligently convey and cast each remnant o'er the stream faced by clov'n rocks, our boundary: then return nor look behind. and purify your home first with sheer sulphur, rain upon it then, (chaplets of olive wound about your heads,) innocuous water, and the customed salt. lastly, to zeus almighty slay a boar: so shall ye vanquish all your enemies." spake teiresias, and wheeling (though his years weighed on him sorely) gained his ivory car. and heracles as some young orchard-tree grew up, amphitryon his reputed sire. old linus taught him letters, phoebus' child, a dauntless toiler by the midnight lamp. each fall whereby the sons of argos fell, the flingers by cross-buttock, each his man by feats of wrestling: all that boxers e'er, grim in their gauntlets, have devised, or they who wage mixed warfare and, adepts in art, upon the foe fall headlong: all such lore phocian harpalicus gave him, hermes' son: whom no man might behold while yet far off and wait his armed onset undismayed: a brow so truculent roofed so stern a face. to launch, and steer in safety round the goal, chariot and steed, and damage ne'er a wheel, this the lad learned of fond amphitryon's self. many a fair prize from listed warriors he had won on argive racegrounds; yet the car whereon he sat came still unshattered home, what gaps were in his harness time had made. then with couched lance to reach the foe, his targe covering his rear, and bide the biting sword; or, on the warpath, place his ambuscade, marshal his lines and rally his cavaliers; this knightly castor learned him, erst exiled from argos, when her realms with all their wealth of vineyards fell to tydeus, who received her and her chariots at adrastus' hand. amongst the heroes none was castor's match till age had dimmed the glory of his youth. such tutors this fond mother gave her son. the stripling's bed was at his father's side, one after his own heart, a lion's skin. his dinner, roast meat, with a loaf that filled a dorian basket, you might soothly say had satisfied a delver; and to close the day he took, sans fire, a scanty meal. a simple frock went halfway down his leg: * * * * * idyll xxv. heracles the lion slayer. * * * * * to whom thus spake the herdsman of the herd, pausing a moment from his handiwork: "friend, i will solve thy questions, for i fear the angry looks of hermes of the roads. no dweller in the skies is wroth as he, with him who saith the asking traveller nay. "the flocks augéas owns, our gracious lord, one pasture pastures not, nor one fence bounds. they wander, look you, some by elissus' banks or god-beloved alphéus' sacred stream, some by buprasion, where the grape abounds, some here: their folds stand separate. but before his herds, though they be myriad, yonder glades that belt the broad lake round lie fresh and fair for ever: for the low-lying meadows take the dew, and teem with herbage honeysweet, to lend new vigour to the hornèd kine. here on thy right their stalls thou canst descry by the flowing river, for all eyes to see: here, where the platans blossom all the year, and glimmers green the olive that enshrines rural apollo, most august of gods. hard by, fair mansions have been reared for us his herdsmen; us who guard with might and main his riches that are more than tongue may tell: casting our seed o'er fallows thrice upturn'd or four times by the share; the bounds whereof well do the delvers know, whose busy feet troop to his wine-vats in fair summer-time. yea, all these acres wise augéas owns, these corn-clad uplands and these orchards green, far as yon ledges whence the cataracts leap. here do we haunt, here toil, as is the wont of labourers in the fields, the livelong day. but prythee tell me thou--so shalt thou best serve thine own interests--wherefore art thou here? seeking augéas, or mayhap some slave that serves him? i can tell thee and i will all thou would'st know: for of no churlish blood thou earnest, nor wert nurtured as a churl: that read i in thy stateliness of form; the sons of heaven move thus among mankind." then answered him the warrior son of zeus. "yea, veteran, i would see the epéan king augéas; surely for this end i came. if he bides there amongst his citizens, ruling the folk, determining the laws, look, father; bid some serf to be my guide, some honoured master-worker in the fields, who to shrewd questions shrewdly can reply. are not we made dependent each on each?" to him the good old swain made answer thus: "stranger, some god hath timed thy visit here, and given thee straightway all thy heart's desire. hither augéas, offspring of the sun, came, with young phyleus splendid in his strength, but yesterday from the city, to review (not in one day) his multitudinous wealth, methinks e'en princes say within themselves, 'the safeguard of the flock's the master's eye.' but haste, we'll seek him: to my own fold i will pilot thee; there haply find the king." he said and went in front: but pondered much (as he surveyed the lion-skin and the club, itself an armful) whence this stranger came; and fain had asked. but fear recalled the words that trembled on his lip, the fear to say aught that his fiery friend might take amiss. for who can fathom all his fellow's mind? the dogs perceived their coming, yet far off: they scented flesh, they heard the thud of feet: and with wild gallop, baying furiously, ran at amphitryon's son: but feebly whined and fawned upon the old man at his side. then heracles, just lifting from the ground a pebble, scared them home, and with hard words cursed the whole pack; and having stopped their din (inly rejoiced, nathless, to see them guard so well an absent master's house) he spake: "lo! what a friend the royal gods have given man in the dog! a trusty servant he! had he withal an understanding heart, to teach him when to rage and when forbear, what brute could claim like praise? but, lacking wit, 'tis but a passionate random-raving thing." he spake: the dogs ran scurrying to their lairs. and now the sun wheeled round his westering car and led still evening on: from every field came thronging the fat flocks to bield and byre. then in their thousands, drove on drove, the kine came into view; as rainclouds, onward driven by stress of gales, the west or mighty north, come up o'er all the heaven; and none may count and naught may stay them as they sweep through air; such multitudes the storm's strength drives ahead, such multitudes climb surging in the rear- so in swift sequence drove succeeded drove, and all the champaign, all the highways swarmed with tramping oxen; all the sumptuous leas rang with their lowing. soon enough the stalls were populous with the laggard-footed kine, soon did the sheep lie folded in their folds. then of that legion none stood idle, none gaped listless at the herd, with naught to do: but one drew near and milked them, binding clogs of wood with leathern thongs around their feet: one brought, all hungering for the milk they loved, the longing young ones to the longing dams. one held the pail, one pressed the dainty cheese, or drove the bulls home, sundered from the kine. pacing from stall to stall, augéas saw what revenue his herdsman brought him in. with him his son surveyed the royal wealth, and, strong of limb and purpose, heracles. then, though the heart within him was as steel, framed to withstand all shocks, amphitryon's son gazed in amazement on those thronging kine; for none had deemed or dreamed that one, or ten, whose wealth was more than regal, owned those tribes: such huge largess the sun had given his child, first of mankind for multitude of flocks. the sun himself gave increase day by day to his child's herds: whatever diseases spoil the farmer, came not there; his kine increased in multitude and value year by year: none cast her young, or bare unfruitful males. three hundred bulls, white-pasterned, crumple-horned, ranged amid these, and eke two hundred roans, sires of a race to be: and twelve besides herded amongst them, sacred to the sun. their skin was white as swansdown, and they moved like kings amid the beasts of laggard foot. scorning the herd in uttermost disdain they cropped the green grass in untrodden fields: and when from the dense jungle to the plain leapt a wild beast, in quest of vagrant cows; scenting him first, the twelve went forth to war. stern was their bellowing, in their eye sat death, foremost of all for mettle and for might and pride of heart loomed phaeton: him the swains regarded as a star; so bright he shone among the herd, the cynosure of eyes. he, soon as he descried the sun-dried skin of the grim lion, made at heracles (whose eye was on him)--fain to make his crest and sturdy brow acquainted with his flanks. straight the prince grasped him with no tender grasp by the left horn, and bowed that giant bulk to earth, neck foremost: then, by pressure brought to bear upon his shoulder, forced him back. the web of muscles that enwraps the nerves stood out from the brute's fore-arm plain to see. marvelled the king, and phyleus his brave son, at the strange prowess of amphitryon's child. then townwards, leaving straight that rich champaign, stout heracles his comrade, phyleus fared; and soon as they had gained the paven road, making their way hotfooted o'er a path (not o'er-conspicuous in the dim green wood) that left the farm and threaded through the vines, out-spake unto the child of zeus most high, who followed in his steps, augéas' son, o'er his right shoulder glancing pleasantly. "o stranger, as some old familiar tale i seem to cast thy history in my mind. for there came one to argos, young and tall, by birth a greek from helicè-on-seas, who told this tale before a multitude: how that an argive in his presence slew a fearful lion-beast, the dread and death of herdsmen; which inhabited a den or cavern by the grove of nemean zeus. he may have come from sacred argos' self, or tiryns, or mycenæ: what know i? but thus he told his tale, and said the slayer was (if my memory serves me) perseus' son. methinks no islander had dared that deed save thee: the lion's skin that wraps thy ribs argues full well some gallant feat of arms. but tell me, warrior, first--that i may know if my prophetic soul speak truth or not- art thou the man of whom that stranger greek spoke in my hearing? have i guessed aright? how slew you single-handed that fell beast? how came it among rivered nemea's glens? for none such monster could the eagerest eye find in all greece: greece harbours bear and boar, and deadly wolf: but not this larger game. 'twas this that made his listeners marvel then: they deemed he told them travellers' tales, to win by random words applause from standers-by." then phyleus from the mid-road edged away, that both might walk abreast, and he might catch more at his ease what fell from heracles: who journeying now alongside thus began:- "on the prior matter, o augéas' child, thine own unaided wit hath ruled aright. but all that monster's history, how it fell, fain would i tell thee who hast ears to hear, save only whence it came: for none of all the argive host could read that riddle right. some god, we dimly guessed, our niggard vows resenting, had upon phoroneus' realm let loose this very scourge of humankind. on peopled pisa plunging like a flood the brute ran riot: notably it cost its neighbours of bembina woes untold. and here eurystheus bade me try my first passage of arms, and slay that fearsome thing. so with my buxom bow and quiver lined with arrows i set forth: my left hand held my club, a beetling olive's stalwart trunk and shapely, still environed in its bark: this hand had torn from holiest helicon the tree entire, with all its fibrous roots. and finding soon the lion's whereabouts, i grasped my bow, and on the bent horn slipped the string, and laid thereon the shaft of death. and, now all eyes, i watched for that fell thing, in hopes to view him ere he spied out me. but midday came, and nowhere could i see one footprint of the beast or hear his roar: and, trust me, none appeared of whom to ask, herdsman or labourer, in the furrowed lea; for wan dismay kept each man in his hut. still on i footed, searching through and through the leafy mountain-passes, till i saw the creature, and forthwith essayed my strength. gorged from some gory carcass, on he stalked at eve towards his lair; his grizzled mane, shoulders, and grim glad visage, all adrip with carnage; and he licked his bearded lips. i, crouched among the shadows of the trees on the green hill-top, waited his approach, and as he came i aimed at his left flank. the barbèd shaft sped idly, nor could pierce the flesh, but glancing dropped on the green grass. he, wondering, raised forthwith his tawny head, and ran his eyes o'er all the vicinage, and snarled and gave to view his cavernous throat. meanwhile i levelled yet another shaft, ill pleased to think my first had fled in vain. in the mid-chest i smote him, where the lungs are seated: still the arrow sank not in, but fell, its errand frustrate, at his feet. once more was i preparing, sore chagrined, to draw the bowstring, when the ravenous beast glaring around espied me, lashed his sides with his huge tail, and opened war at once. swelled his vast neck, his dun locks stood on end with rage: his spine moved sinuous as a bow, till all his weight hung poised on flank and loin. and e'en as, when a chariot-builder bends with practised skill his shafts of splintered fig, hot from the fire, to be his axle-wheels; flies the tough-rinded sapling from the hands that shape it, at a bound recoiling far: so from far-off the dread beast, all of a heap, sprang on me, hungering for my life-blood. i thrust with one hand my arrows in his face and my doffed doublet, while the other raised my seasoned cudgel o'er his crest, and drave full at his temples, breaking clean in twain on the fourfooted warrior's airy scalp my club; and ere he reached me, down he fell. headlong he fell, and poised on tremulous feet stood, his head wagging, and his eyes grown dim; for the shrewd stroke had shattered brain and bone. i, marking him beside himself with pain. fell, ere recovering he should breathe again, at vantage on his solid sinewy neck, my bow and woven quiver thrown aside. with iron clasp i gripped him from the rear (his talons else had torn me) and, my foot set on him, forced to earth by dint of heel his hinder parts, my flanks entrenched the while behind his fore-arm; till his thews were stretched and strained, and on his haunches stark he stood and lifeless; hell received his monstrous ghost. then with myself i counselled how to strip from off the dead beast's limbs his shaggy hide, a task full onerous, since i found it proof against all blows of steel or stone or wood. some god at last inspired me with the thought, with his own claws to rend the lion's skin. with these i flayed him soon, and sheathed and armed my limbs against the shocks of murderous war. thus, sir, the nemean lion met his end, erewhile the constant curse of beast and man." idyll xxvi. the bacchanals. agavè of the vermeil-tinted cheek and ino and autonoä marshalled erst three bands of revellers under one hill-peak. they plucked the wild-oak's matted foliage first, lush ivy then, and creeping asphodel; and reared therewith twelve shrines amid the untrodden fell: to semelè three, to dionysus nine. next, from a vase drew offerings subtly wrought, and prayed and placed them on each fresh green shrine; so by the god, who loved such tribute, taught. perched on the sheer cliff, pentheus could espy all, in a mastick hoar ensconced that grew thereby. autonoä marked him, and with, frightful cries flew to make havoc of those mysteries weird that must not be profaned by vulgar eyes. her frenzy frenzied all. then pentheus feared and fled: and in his wake those damsels three, each with her trailing robe up-gathered to the knee. "what will ye, dames," quoth pentheus. "thou shalt guess at what we mean, untold," autonoä said. agavè moaned--so moans a lioness over her young one--as she clutched his head: while ino on the carcass fairly laid her heel, and wrenched away shoulder and shoulder-blade. autonoä's turn came next: and what remained of flesh their damsels did among them share, and back to thebes they came all carnage-stained, and planted not a king but aching there. warned by this tale, let no man dare defy great bacchus; lest a death more awful he should die, and when he counts nine years or scarcely ten, rush to his ruin. may i pass my days uprightly, and be loved of upright men! and take this motto, all who covet praise: ('twas ægis-bearing zeus that spake it first:) 'the godly seed fares well: the wicked's is accurst.' now bless ye bacchus, whom on mountain snows, prisoned in his thigh till then, the almighty laid. and bless ye fairfaced semelè, and those her sisters, hymned of many a hero-maid, who wrought, by bacchus fired, a deed which none may gainsay--who shall blame that which a god hath done? idyll xxvii. a countryman's wooing. _daphnis. a maiden_. the maiden. how fell sage helen? through a swain like thee. daphnis. nay the true helen's just now kissing me. the maiden. satyr, ne'er boast: 'what's idler than a kiss?' daphnis. yet in such pleasant idling there is bliss. the maiden. i'll wash my mouth: where go thy kisses then? daphnis. wash, and return it--to be kissed again. the maiden. go kiss your oxen, and not unwed maids. daphnis. ne'er boast; for beauty is a dream that fades. the maiden. past grapes are grapes: dead roses keep their smell. daphnis. come to yon olives: i have a tale to tell. the maiden. not i: you fooled me with smooth words before. daphnis. come to yon elms, and hear me pipe once more. the maiden. pipe to yourself: your piping makes me cry. daphnis. a maid, and flout the paphian? fie, oh fie! the maiden. she's naught to me, if artemis' favour last. daphnis. hush, ere she smite you and entrap you fast. the maiden. and let her smite me, trap me as she will! daphnis. your artemis shall be your saviour still? the maiden. unhand me! what, again? i'll tear your lip. daphnis. can you, could damsel e'er, give love the slip? the maiden. you are his bondslave, but not i by pan! daphnis. i doubt he'll give thee to a worser man. the maiden. many have wooed me, but i fancied none. daphnis. till among many came the destined _one_. the maiden. wedlock is woe. dear lad, what can i do? daphnis. woe it is not, but joy and dancing too. the maiden. wives dread their husbands: so i've heard it said. daphnis. nay, they rule o'er them. what does woman dread? the maiden. then children--eileithya's dart is keen. daphnis. but the deliverer, artemis, is your queen. the maiden. and bearing children all our grace destroys. daphnis. bear them and shine more lustrous in your boys. the maiden. should i say yea, what dower awaits me then? daphnis. thine are my cattle, thine this glade and glen. the maiden. swear not to wed, then leave me in my woe? daphnis. not i by pan, though thou should'st bid me go. the maiden. and shall a cot be mine, with farm and fold! daphnis. thy cot's half-built, fair wethers range this wold. the maiden. what, what to my old father must i say? daphnis. soon as he hears my name he'll not say nay. the maiden. speak it: by e'en a name we're oft beguiled. daphnis. i'm daphnis, lycid's and nomæa's child. the maiden. well-born indeed: and not less so am i. daphnis. i know--menalcas' daughter may look high. the maiden. that grove, where stands your sheepfold, shew me please. daphnis. nay look, how green, how tall my cypress-trees. the maiden. graze, goats: i go to learn the herdsman's trade. daphnis. feed, bulls: i shew my copses to my maid. the maiden. satyr, what mean you? you presume o'ermuch. daphnis. this waist is round, and pleasant to the touch. the maiden. by pan, i'm like to swoon! unhand me pray! daphnis. why be so timorous? pretty coward, stay. the maiden. this bank is wet: you've soiled my pretty gown. daphnis. see, a soft fleece to guard it i put down. the maiden. and you've purloined my sash. what can this mean? daphnis. this sash i'll offer to the paphian queen. the maiden. stay, miscreant--some one comes--i heard a noise. daphnis. 'tis but the green trees whispering of our joys. the maiden. you've torn my plaidie, and i am half unclad. daphnis. anon i'll give thee a yet ampler plaid. the maiden. generous just now, you'll one day grudge me bread. daphnis. ah! for thy sake my life-blood i could shed. the maiden. artemis, forgive! thy eremite breaks her vow. daphnis. love, and love's mother, claim a calf and cow. the maiden. a woman i depart, my girlhood o'er. daphnis. be wife, be mother; but a girl no more. thus interchanging whispered talk the pair, their faces all aglow, long lingered there. at length the hour arrived when they must part. with downcast eyes, but sunshine in her heart, she went to tend her flock; while daphnis ran back to his herded bulls, a happy man. idyll xxviii. the distaff. distaff, blithely whirling distaff, azure-eyed athena's gift to the sex the aim and object of whose lives is household thrift, seek with me the gorgeous city raised by neilus, where a plain roof of pale-green rush o'er-arches aphroditè's hallowed fane. thither ask i zeus to waft me, fain to see my old friend's face, nicias, o'er whose birth presided every passion-breathing grace; fain to meet his answering welcome; and anon deposit thee in his lady's hands, thou marvel of laborious ivory. many a manly robe ye'll fashion, much translucent maiden's gear; nay, should e'er the fleecy mothers twice within the selfsame year yield their wool in yonder pasture, theugenis of the dainty feet would perform the double labour: matron's cares to her are sweet. to an idler or a trifler i had verily been loth to resign thee, o my distaff, for the same land bred us both: in the land corinthian archias built aforetime, thou hadst birth, in our island's core and marrow, whence have sprung the kings of earth: to the home i now transfer thee of a man who knows full well every craft whereby men's bodies dire diseases may repel: there to live in sweet miletus. lady of the distaff she shall be named, and oft reminded of her poet-friend by thee: men shall look on thee and murmur to each other, 'lo! how small was the gift, and yet how precious! friendship's gifts are priceless all.' idyll xxix. loves. 'sincerity comes with the wine-cup,' my dear: then now o'er our wine-cups let us be sincere. my soul's treasured secret to you i'll impart; it is this; that i never won fairly your heart. one half of my life, i am conscious, has flown; the residue lives on your image alone. you are kind, and i dream i'm in paradise then; you are angry, and lo! all is darkness again. it is right to torment one who loves you? obey your elder; 'twere best; and you'll thank me one day. settle down in one nest on one tree (taking care that no cruel reptile can clamber up there); as it is with your lovers you're fairly perplext; one day you choose one bough, another the next. whoe'er at all struck by your graces appears, is more to you straight than the comrade of years; while he's like the friend of a day put aside; for the breath of your nostrils, i think, is your pride. form a friendship, for life, with some likely young lad; so doing, in honour your name shall be had. nor would love use you hardly; though lightly can he bind strong men in chains, and has wrought upon me till the steel is as wax--but i'm longing to press that exquisite mouth with a clinging caress. no? reflect that you're older each year than the last; that we all must grow gray, and the wrinkles come fast. reflect, ere you spurn me, that youth at his sides wears wings; and once gone, all pursuit he derides: nor are men over keen to catch charms as they fly. think of this and be gentle, be loving as i: when your years are maturer, we two shall be then the pair in the iliad over again. but if you consign all my words to the wind and say, 'why annoy me? you're not to my mind,' i--who lately in quest of the gold fruit had sped for your sake, or of cerberus guard of the dead- though you called me, would ne'er stir a foot from my door, for my love and my sorrow thenceforth will be o'er. idyll xxx. the death of adonis. cythera saw adonis and knew that he was dead; she marked the brow, all grisly now, the cheek no longer red; and "bring the boar before me" unto her loves she said. forthwith her winged attendants ranged all the woodland o'er, and found and bound in fetters threefold the grisly boar: one dragged him at a rope's end e'en as a vanquished foe; one went behind and drave him and smote him with his bow: on paced the creature feebly; he feared cythera so. to him said aphroditè: "so, worst of beasts, 'twas you who rent that thigh asunder, who him that loved me slew?" and thus the beast made answer: "cythera, hear me swear by thee, by him that loved thee, and by these bonds i wear, and them before whose hounds i ran- i meant no mischief to the man who seemed to thee so fair. "as on a carven statue men gaze, i gazed on him; i seemed on fire with mad desire to kiss that offered limb: my ruin, aphroditè, thus followed from my whim. "now therefore take and punish and fairly cut away these all unruly tusks of mine; for to what end serve they? and if thine indignation be not content with this, cut off the mouth that ventured to offer him a kiss"- but aphroditè pitied and bade them loose his chain. the boar from that day forward still followed in her train; nor ever to the wildwood attempted to return, but in the focus of desire preferred to burn and burn. idyll xxxi. loves. ah for this the most accursed, unendurable of ills! nigh two months a fevered fancy for a maid my bosom fills. fair she is, as other damsels: but for what the simplest swain claims from the demurest maiden, i must sue and sue in vain. yet doth now this thing of evil my longsuffering heart beguile, though the utmost she vouchsafes me is the shadow of a smile: and i soon shall know no respite, have no solace e'en in sleep. yesterday i watched her pass me, and from down-dropt eyelids peep at the face she dared not gaze on--every moment blushing more- and my love took hold upon me as it never took before. home i went a wounded creature, with a gnawing at my heart; and unto the soul within me did my bitterness impart. "soul, why deal with me in this wise? shall thy folly know no bound? canst thou look upon these temples, with their locks of silver crowned, and still deem thee young and shapely? nay, my soul, let us be sage; act as they that have already sipped the wisdom-cup of age. men have loved and have forgotten. happiest of all is he to the lover's woes a stranger, from the lover's fetters free: lightly his existence passes, as a wild-deer fleeting fast: tamed, it may be, he shall voyage in a maiden's wake at last: still to-day 'tis his to revel with his mates in boyhood's flowers. as to thee, thy brain and marrow passion evermore devours, prey to memories that haunt thee e'en in visions of the night; and a year shall scarcely pluck thee from thy miserable plight." such and divers such reproaches did i heap upon my soul. and my soul in turn made answer:--"whoso deems he can control wily love, the same shall lightly gaze upon the stars of heaven and declare by what their number overpasses seven times seven. will i, nill i, i may never from my neck his yoke unloose. so, my friend, a god hath willed it: he whose plots could outwit zeus, and the queen whose home is cyprus. i, a leaflet of to-day, i whose breath is in my nostrils, am i wrong to own his sway?" fragment prom the "berenice." ye that would fain net fish and wealth withal, for bare existence harrowing yonder mere, to this our lady slay at even-fall that holy fish, which, since it hath no peer for gloss and sheen, the dwellers about here have named the silver fish. this done, let down your nets, and draw them up, and never fear to find them empty * * * * epigrams and epitaphs. i. yours be yon dew-steep'd roses, yours be yon thick-clustering ivy, maids of helicon: thine, pythian pæan, that dark-foliaged bay; with such thy delphian crags thy front array. this horn'd and shaggy ram shall stain thy shrine, who crops e'en now the feathering turpentine. ii. to pan doth white-limbed daphnis offer here (he once piped sweetly on his herdsman's flute) his reeds of many a stop, his barbèd spear, and scrip, wherein he held his hoards of fruit. iii. daphnis, thou slumberest on the leaf-strown lea, thy frame at rest, thy springes newly spread o'er the fell-side. but two are hunting thee: pan, and priapus with his fair young head hung with wan ivy. see! they come, they leap into thy lair--fly, fly,--shake off the coil of sleep! iv. for yon oaken avenue, swain, you must steer, where a statue of figwood, you'll see, has been set: it has never been barked, has three legs and no ear; but i think there is life in the patriarch yet. he is handsomely shrined within fair chapel-walls; where, fringed with sweet cypress and myrtle and bay, a stream ever-fresh from the rock's hollow falls, and the ringleted vine her ripe store doth display: and the blackbirds, those shrill-piping songsters of spring, wake the echoes with wild inarticulate song: and the notes of the nightingale plaintively ring, as she pours from her dun throat her lay sweet and strong. sitting there, to priapus, the gracious one, pray that the lore he has taught me i soon may unlearn: say i'll give him a kid, and in case he says nay to this offer, three victims to him will i burn; a kid, a fleeced ram, and a lamb sleek and fat; he will listen, mayhap, to my prayers upon that. v. prythee, sing something sweet to me--you that can play first and second at once. then i too will essay to croak on the pipes: and yon lad shall salute our ears with a melody breathed through his flute. in the cave by the green oak our watch we will keep, and goatish old pan we'll defraud of his sleep. vi. poor thyrsis! what boots it to weep out thine eyes? thy kid was a fair one, i own: but the wolf with his cruel claw made her his prize, and to darkness her spirit hath flown. do the dogs cry? what boots it? in spite of their cries there is left of her never a bone. vii. for a statue of æsculapius. far as miletus travelled pæan's son; there to be guest of nicias, guest of one who heals all sickness; and who still reveres him, for his sake this cedarn image rears. the sculptor's hand right well did nicias fill; and here the sculptor lavished all his skill. viii. ortho's epitaph. friend, ortho of syracuse gives thee this charge: never venture out, drunk, on a wild winter's night. i did so and died. my possessions were large; yet the turf that i'm clad with is strange to me quite. ix. epitaph of cleonicus. man, husband existence: ne'er launch on the sea out of season: our tenure of life is but frail. think of poor cleonicus: for phasos sailed he from the valleys of syria, with many a bale: with many a bale, ocean's tides he would stem when the pleiads were sinking; and he sank with them. x. for a statue of the muses. to you this marble statue, maids divine, xenocles raised, one tribute unto nine. your votary all admit him: by this skill he gat him fame: and you he honours still. xi. epitaph of eusthenes. here the shrewd physiognomist eusthenes lies, who could tell all your thoughts by a glance at your eyes. a stranger, with strangers his honoured bones rest; they valued sweet song, and he gave them his best. all the honours of death doth the poet possess: if a small one, they mourned for him nevertheless. xii. for a tripod erected by damoteles to bacchus. the precentor damoteles, bacchus, exalts your tripod, and, sweetest of deities, you. he was champion of men, if his boyhood had faults; and he ever loved honour and seemliness too. xiii. for a statue of anacreon. this statue, stranger, scan with earnest gaze; and, home returning, say "i have beheld anacreon, in teos; him whose lays were all unmatched among our sires of eld." say further: "youth and beauty pleased him best;" and all the man will fairly stand exprest. xiv. epitaph of eurymedon. thou hast gone to the grave, and abandoned thy son yet a babe, thy own manhood but scarcely begun. thou art throned among gods: and thy country will take thy child to her heart, for his brave father's sake. xv. another. prove, traveller, now, that you honour the brave above the poltroon, when he's laid in the grave, by murmuring 'peace to eurymedon dead.' the turf should lie light on so sacred a head. xvi. for a statue of the heavenly aphrodite. aphrodite stands here; she of heavenly birth; not that base one who's wooed by the children of earth. 'tis a goddess; bow down. and one blemishless all, chrysogonè, placed her in amphicles' hall: chrysogonè's heart, as her children, was his, and each year they knew better what happiness is. for, queen, at life's outset they made thee their friend; religion is policy too in the end. xvii. to epicharmus. read these lines to epicharmus. they are dorian, as was he the sire of comedy. of his proper self bereavèd, bacchus, unto thee we rear his brazen image here; we in syracuse who sojourn, elsewhere born. thus much we can do for our countryman, mindful of the debt we owe him. for, possessing ample store of legendary lore, many a wholesome word, to pilot youths and maids thro' life, he spake: we honour him for their sake. xviii. epitaph of cleita, nurse of medeius. the babe medeius to his thracian nurse this stone--inscribed _to cleita_--reared in the midhighway. her modest virtues oft shall men rehearse; who doubts it? is not 'cleita's worth' a proverb to this day? xix. to archilochus. pause, and scan well archilochus, the bard of elder days, by east and west alike's confest the mighty lyrist's praise. delian apollo loved him well, and well the sister-choir: his songs were fraught with subtle thought, and matchless was his lyre. xx. under a statue of peisander, who wrote the labours of heracles. he whom ye gaze on was the first that in quaint song the deeds rehearsed of him whose arm was swift to smite, who dared the lion to the fight: that tale, so strange, so manifold, peisander of cameirus told. for this good work, thou may'st be sure, his country placed him here, in solid brass that shall endure through many a month and year. xxi. epitaph of hipponax. behold hipponax' burialplace, a true bard's grave. approach it not, if you're a base and base-born knave. but if your sires were honest men and unblamed you, sit down thereon serenely then, and eke sleep too. * * * * * tuneful hipponax rests him here. let no base rascal venture near. ye who rank high in birth and mind sit down--and sleep, if so inclined. xxii. on his own book. not my namesake of chios, but i, who belong to the syracuse burghers, have sung you my song. i'm praxagoras' son by philinna the fair, and i never asked praise that was owing elsewhere. transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. [illustration: one of the camel corps of egypt] the rulers of the mediterranean by richard harding davis author of "the west from a car-window" "gallegher" "van bibber and others" etc. illustrated [illustration: publisher's logo] new york harper & brothers publishers 1894 copyright, 1893, by harper & brothers. _all rights reserved._ to hon. edward c. little ex-diplomatic-agent and consul-general of the united states to egypt contents chap. page i the rock of gibraltar 1 ii tangier 37 iii from gibraltar to cairo 72 iv cairo as a show-place 102 v the englishmen in egypt 139 vi modern athens 178 vii constantinople 198 illustrations page one of the camel corps of egypt _frontispiece_ the man from detroit 5 the rock from the bay 9 types 13 gibraltar as seen across the neutral ground 15 an english sentry 19 a spanish sentry 21 signal station on the top of the rock 25 cannons masked by bushes 29 tea in the officers' quarters 33 bread merchants at the gate 41 sanitary outfit dumping refuse over the wall 47 a woman of tangier 53 water-vender at the door of a private house 57 a street dancer 63 in the prison 67 maltese peddlers 75 street of santa lucia, malta 79 brindisi 85 pillar of cæsar at brindisi 89 approach to ismaïlia by the suez canal 93 steam-dredge at work in the suez canal 97 bazar of a worker in brass 105 group of natives in front of shepheard's hotel 109 a british square formed in front of the pyramids 117 shadow of the pyramid of cheops 123 a section of the pyramid 129 dahabeeyahs on the nile before cairo 135 egyptian infantry in their different uniforms 141 riaz pasha, prime-minister of egypt 145 an egyptian lancer 149 tigrane pasha, minister of foreign affairs 153 a camel corps patrol at wadi halfa 157 h. h. abbas ii., khedive of egypt 161 the gun mule of the mule battery 165 lord cromer, the english diplomatic agent in egypt 169 a gun of the mule battery in action 173 greek soldier in the national (albanian) uniform 179 greek peasant girl 181 the university of athens 183 albanian peasant woman 186 albanian peasant woman 187 greek peasant 188 albanian peasant in the streets of athens 189 polytechnic school 191 an old athenian of the present day 194 a greek shepherd 195 general view of constantinople 201 one of the sultan's palaces on the bosporus 205 a fire company of constantinople 209 street dogs of constantinople 215 guard of cavalry preceding the sultan to the mosque 219 exterior of the mosque of st. sophia 225 [illustration: the rulers of the mediterranean] i the rock of gibraltar [illustration: gibraltar] if you have always crossed the atlantic in the spring-time or in the summer months, as do most tourists, you will find that leaving new york in the winter is more like a relief expedition to the north pole than the setting forth on a pleasure tour to the summer shores of the mediterranean. there is no green grass on the hills of staten island, but there is, instead, a long field of ice stretching far up the hudson river, and a wind that cuts into the face, and dashes the spray up over the tugboats in frozen layers, leaving it there like the icing on a cake. the atlantic highlands are black with bare branches and white with snow, and you observe for the first time that men who go down to the sea in ships know nothing of open fireplaces. an icy wind keeps the deck as clear as a master-at-arms could do it; and sudden storms of snow, which you had always before associated with streets or fields, and not at all with the decks of ships, burst over the side, and leave the wood-work wet and slippery, and cold to the touch. and then on the third or fourth day out the sea grows calm, and your overcoat seems to have taken on an extra lining; and strange people, who apparently have come on board during the night, venture out on the sunlit deck and inquire for steamer chairs and mislaid rugs. these smaller vessels which run from new york to genoa are as different from the big north atlantic boats, with their twin screws and five hundred cabin passengers, as a family boarding-house is from a broadway hotel. this is so chiefly because you are sailing under a german instead of an english flag. there is no one so important as an english captain--he is like a bishop in gold lace; but a german captain considers his passengers as one large happy family, and treats them as such, whether they like their new relatives or not. the discipline on board the _fulda_ was like that of a ship of war, where the officers and crew were concerned, but the passengers might have believed they were on their own private yacht. there was music for breakfast, dinner, and tea; music when the fingers of the trombonist were frozen and when the snow fell upon the taut surface of the big drum; and music at dawn to tell us it was sunday, so that you awoke imagining yourself at church. there was also a ball, and the captain led an opening march, and the stewards stood at every point to see that the passengers kept in line, and "rounded up" those who tried to slip away from the procession. there were speeches, too, at all times, and lectures and religious services, and on the last night out a grand triumph of the _chef_, who built wonderful candy goddesses of liberty smiling upon the other symbolic lady who keeps watch on the rhine, and the band played "dixie," which it had been told was the national anthem, and the portrait of the german emperor smiled down upon us over his autograph. all this was interesting, because it was characteristic of the germans; it showed their childish delight in little things, and the same simplicity of character which makes the german soldiers who would not move out of the way of the french bullets dance around a christmas-tree. the american or the englishman will not do these things, because he has too keen a sense of the ridiculous, and is afraid of being laughed at. so when he goes to sea he plays poker and holds auctions on the run. there was only one passenger on board who objected to the music. he was from detroit, and for the first three days remained lashed to his steamer chair like a mummy, with nothing showing but a blue nose and closed eyelids. the band played at his end of the deck, and owing to the fingers of the players being frozen, and to the sudden lurches of the ship, the harmony was sometimes destroyed. those who had an ear for music picked up their steamer chairs and moved to windward; but this young man, being half dead and firmly lashed to his place, was unable to save himself. on the morning of the fourth day, when the concert was over and the band had gone to thaw out, the young man suddenly sat upright and pointed his forefinger at the startled passengers. we had generally decided that he was dead. "the lord knows i'm a sick man," he said, blinking his eyes feebly; "but if i live till midnight i'll find out where they hide those horns, and i'll drop 'em into the gulf stream, if it takes my dying breath." he then fell over backwards, and did not speak again until we reached gibraltar. there is something about the sight of land after one has been a week without it which supplies a want that nothing else can fill; and it is interesting to note how careless one is as to its name, or whether it is pink or pale blue on the maps, or whether it is ruled by a king or a colonial secretary. it is quite sufficient that it is land. this was impressed upon me once, on entering new york harbor, by a young man who emerged from his deck cabin to discover, what all the other passengers already knew, that we were in the upper bay. he gave a shout of ecstatic relief and pleasure. "that," he cried, pointing to the west, "is staten island, but that," pointing to the right, "is land." the first land you see on going to gibraltar is the azores islands. they are volcanic and mountainous, and accompany the boat for a day and a half; but they could be improved if they were moved farther south about two hundred miles, as one has to get up at dawn to see the best of them. it is quite warm by this time, and the clothes you wore in new york seem to belong to a barbarous period and past fashion, and have become heavy and cumbersome, and take up an unnecessary amount of room in your trunk. [illustration: the man from detroit] and then people tell you that there is land in sight again, and you find how really far you are from home when you learn that it is portugal, and so a part of europe, and not an island thrown up by a volcano, or stolen or strayed from its moorings at the mainland. portugal is apparently a high red hill, with a round white tower on the top of it flying signal flags. its chief industry is the arranging of these flags by a man. it is, on the whole, a disappointing country. after this, everybody begins to pack and to exchange visiting-cards; and those who are to get off at gibraltar are pursued by stewards and bandmasters and young men with testimonials that they want signed, and by the weak in spirit, who, at the eleventh hour, think they will not go on to genoa, but will get off here and go on to tangier, and who want you to decide for them. and which do you think would pay best, and what is there to see in tangier, anyway? and as that is exactly what you are going to find out, you cannot tell. when i left the deck the last night out the stars were all over the heavens; and the foremast, as it swept slowly from side to side, looked like a black pendulum upside down marking out the sky and portioning off the stars. and when i woke there was a great creaking of chains, and i could see out of my port-hole hundreds of fixed lights and rows and double rows of lamps, so that you might have thought the ship during the night had run aground in the heart of a city. the first sight of gibraltar is, i think, disappointing. it means so much, and so many lives have been given for it, and so many ships have been sunk by its batteries, and such great powers have warred for twelve hundred years for its few miles of stone, that its black outline against the sky, with nothing to measure it with but the fading stars, is dwarfed and spoiled. it is only after the sun begins to turn the lights out, and you are able to compare it with the great ships at its base, and you see the battlements and the mouths of cannon, and the clouds resting on its top, that you understand it; and then when the outline of the crouching lion, that faces all europe, comes into relief, you remember it is, as they say, the lock to the mediterranean, of which england holds the key. and even while you feel this, and are greedily following the course of each rampart and terrace with eyes that are tired of blank stretches of water, some one points to a low line of mountains lying like blue clouds before the red sky of the sunrise, dim, forbidding, and mysterious--and you know that it is africa. spain, lying to the right, all green and amethyst, and flippant and gay with white houses and red roofs, and gibraltar's grim show of battlements and war, become somehow of little moment. you feel that you have known them always, and that they are as you fancied they would be. but this other land across the water looks as inscrutable, as dark, and as silent as the sphinx that typifies it, and you feel that its pillar of hercules still marks the entrance to the "unknown world." nine out of every ten of those who visit gibraltar for the first time expect to find an island. it ought to be, and it would be one but for a strip of level turf half a mile wide and half a mile long which joins it to the sunny green hills of spain. but for this bit of land, which they call "the neutral ground," gibraltar would be an island, for it has the mediterranean to the east, a bay, and beyond that the hills of spain to the west, and africa dimly showing fourteen miles across the sea to the south. [illustration: the rock from the bay] gibraltar has been besieged thirteen times; by moors and by spaniards, and again by moors, and again by spaniards against spaniards. it was during one of these wars between two factions in spain, in 1704, that the english, who were helping one of the factions, took the rock, and were so well pleased with it that they settled there, and have remained there ever since. if possession is nine points of the law, there was never a place in the history of the world held with nine as obvious points. there were three more sieges after the english took gibraltar, one of them, the last, continuing for four years. the english were fighting america at the time, and rowing in the nile, and so did not do much towards helping general george elliot, who was governor of the rock at that time. it would appear to be, as well as one can judge from this distance, a case of neglect on the part of the mother-country for her little colony and her six thousand men, very much like her forgetfulness of gordon, only elliot succeeded where gordon failed (if you can associate that word with that name), and so no one blamed the home government for risking what would have been a more serious loss than the loss of calais, had elliot surrendered, and "gib" gone back to its rightful owners, that is, the owners who have the one point. the history of this siege is one of the most interesting of war stories; it is interesting whether you ever expect to visit gibraltar or not; it is doubly interesting when you walk the pretty streets of the rock to-day, with its floating population of twenty thousand, and try to imagine the place held by six thousand half-starved, sick, and wounded soldiers, living at times on grass and herbs and handfuls of rice, and yet carrying on an apparently forlorn fight for four years against the entire army and navy of spain, and, at the last, against the arms of france as well. we are apt to consider the gibraltar of to-day as occupying the same position to the mediterranean as queenstown does to the atlantic, a place where passengers go ashore while the mails are being taken on board, and not so much for their interest in the place itself as to again feel solid earth under their feet. there are passengers who will tell you on the way out that you can see all there is to be seen there in three hours. as a matter of fact, one can live in gibraltar for many weeks and see something new every day. it struck me as being more different kinds of a place than any other spot of land i had ever visited, and one that changed its aspect with every shifting of the wind, and with each rising and setting of the sun. it is the clearing-house for three most picturesque peoples--the moors, in their yellow slippers and bare legs and voluminous robes and snowy turbans; the spaniards, with romantic black capes and cloaks and red sashes, the women with the lace mantilla and brilliant kerchiefs and pretty faces; and, mixed with these, the pride and glory of the british army and navy, in all the bravery of red coats and white helmets, or blue jackets, or highland kilts. it is a fortress as imposing as the tower of london, a winter resort as pretty as st. augustine, and a seaport town of free entry, into which come on every tide people of many nations, and ships flying every flag. [illustration: a type] [illustration: a type] around its base are the ramparts, like a band of stone and steel; above them the town, rising like a staircase, with houses for steps--yellow houses, with light green blinds sticking out at different angles, and with sloping red roofs meeting other lines of red roofs, and broken by a carpeting of green where the parks and gardens make an opening in the yellow front of the town, and from which rise tall palms and palmettoes, and rows of sea-pines, and fluttering union-jacks which mark the barracks of a regiment. above the town is the rock, covered with a green growth of scrub and of little trees below, and naked and bare above, stretching for several miles from north to south, and rearing its great bulk up into the sky until it loses its summit in the clouds. it is never twice the same. to-day it may be smiling and resplendent under a warm, brilliant sun that spreads out each shade of green, and shows each terrace and rampart as clearly as though one saw it through a glass; the sky becomes as blue as the sea and the bay, and the white villages of spain seem as near to one as the red soldier smoking his pipe on the mountings half-way up the rock. and to-morrow the whole top of the rock may be lost in a thick curtain of gray clouds, and the waters of the bay will be tossing and covered with white-caps, and the lands about disappear from sight as though they had sunk into the sea during the night and had left you alone on an island. at times a sunset paints the rock a martial red, or the moonlight softens it, and you see only the tall palms and the graceful balconies and the gardens of plants, and each rampart becomes a terrace and each casemate a balcony. or at night, when the lamps are lit, you might imagine yourself on the stage of a theatre, walking in a scene set for _fra diavolo_. there are no such streets or houses outside of stage-land. it is only in stage cities that the pavements and streets are so conspicuously clean, or that the hanging lamps of beaten iron-work throw such deep shadows, or that there are such high, heavily carved moorish doorways and mysterious twisting stairways in the solid rock, or shops with such queer signs, or walls plastered with such odd-colored placards--streets where every footfall echoes, and where dark figures suddenly appear from narrow alleyways and cry "halt, there!" at you, and then "all's well" as you pass by. [illustration: gibraltar as seen across the neutral ground] gibraltar has one main street running up and clinging to the side of the hill from the principal quay to the most southern point of the rock. houses reach up to it from the first level of the ramparts, and continue on up the hill from its other side. on this street are the bazars of the moors, and the english shops and the spanish cafés, and the cathedral, and the hotels, and the governor's house, and every one in gibraltar is sure to appear on it at least once in the twenty-four hours. but the color and tone of the street are military. there are soldiers at every step--soldiers carrying the mail or bearing reports, or soldiers in bulk with a band ahead, or soldiers going out to guard the north front, where lies the neutral ground, or to target practice, or to play football; soldiers in two or threes, with their sticks under their arms, and their caps very much cocked, and pipes in their mouths. but these make slow progress, for there is always an officer in sight--either a boy officer just out from england riding to the polo field near the neutral ground, or a commanding officer in a black tunic and a lot of ribbons across his breast, or an officer of the day with his sash and sword; and each of these has to be saluted. this is an interesting spectacle, and one that is always new. you see three soldiers coming at you with a quick step, talking and grinning, alert and jaunty, and suddenly the upper part of their three bodies becomes rigid, though their legs continue as before, apparently of their own volition, and their hands go up and their pipes and grins disappear, and they pass you with eyes set like dead men's eyes, and palms facing you as though they were trying to learn which way the wind was blowing. this is due, you discover, to the passing of a stout gentleman in knickerbockers, who switches his rattan stick in the air in reply. sometimes when he salutes the soldier stops altogether, and so his walks abroad are punctuated at every twenty yards. it takes an ordinary soldier in gibraltar one hour to walk ten minutes. everybody walks in the middle of the main street in gibraltar, because the sidewalks are only two feet wide, and because all the streets are as clean as the deck of a yacht. cabs of yellow wood and diligences with jangling bells and red worsted harness gallop through this street and sweep the people up against the wall, and long lines of goats who leave milk in a natural manner at various shops tangle themselves up with long lines of little donkeys and longer lines of geese, with which the local police struggle valiantly. all of these things, troops and goats and yellow cabs and polo ponies and dog-carts, and priests with curly-brimmed hats, and baggy-breeched moors, and huntsmen in pink coats and tommies in red, and sailors rolling along in blue, make the main street of gibraltar as full of variety as a mask ball. of the gibraltar militant, the fortress and the key to the mediterranean, you can see but the little that lies open to you and to every one along the ramparts. of the real defensive works of the place you are not allowed to have even a guess. the ramparts stretch all along the western side of the rock, presenting to the bay a high shelving wall which twists and changes its front at every hundred yards, and in such an unfriendly way that whoever tried to scale its slippery surface at one point would have a hundred yards of ramparts on either side of him, from which two sides gunners and infantry could observe his efforts with comfort and safety to themselves; and from which, when tired of watching him slip and scramble, they could and undoubtedly would blow him into bits. but they would probably save him the trouble of coming so far by doing that before he left his vessel in the bay. the northern face of the rock--that end which faces spain, and which makes the head of the crouching lion--shows two long rows of teeth cut in its surface by convicts of long ago. you are allowed to walk through these dungeons, and to look down upon the neutral ground and the little spanish town at the end of its half-mile over the butts of great guns. and you will marvel not so much at the engineering skill of whoever it was who planned this defence as at the weariness and the toil of the criminals who gave up the greater part of their lives to hewing and blasting out these great galleries and gloomy passages, through which your footsteps echo like the report of cannon. [illustration: an english sentry] lower down, on the outside of this mask of rock, are more ramparts, built there by man, from which infantry could sweep the front of the enemy were they to approach from the only point from which a land attack is possible. the other side of the rock, that which faces the mediterranean, is unfortified, except by the big guns on the very summit, for no man could scale it, and no ball yet made could shatter its front. to further protect the north from a land attack there is at the base of the rock and below the ramparts a great moat, bridged by an apparently solid piece of masonry. this roadway, which leads to the north gate of the fortress--the one which is closed at six each night--is undermined, and at a word could be blown into pebbles, turning the moat into a great lake of water, and virtually changing the rock of gibraltar into an island. i never crossed this roadway without wondering whether the sentry underneath might not be lighting his pipe near the powder-magazine, and i generally reached the end of it at a gallop. [illustration: a spanish sentry] there is still another protection to the north front. it is only the protection which a watch-dog gives at night; but a watch-dog is most important. he gives you time to sound your burglar-alarm and to get a pistol from under your pillow. a line of sentries pace the neutral ground, and have paced it for nearly two hundred years. their sentry-boxes dot the half-mile of turf, and their red coats move backward and forward night and day, and any one who leaves the straight and narrow road crossing the neutral ground, and who comes too near, passes a dead-line and is shot. facing them, a half-mile off, are the white adobe sentry-boxes of spain and another row of sentries, wearing long blue coats and queer little shakos, and smoking cigarettes. and so the two great powers watch each other unceasingly across the half-mile of turf, and say, "so far shall you go, and no farther; this belongs to me." there is nothing more significant than these two rows of sentries; you notice it whenever you cross the neutral ground for a ride in spain. first you see the english sentry, rather short and very young, but very clean and rigid, and scowling fiercely over the chin strap of his big white helmet. his shoulder-straps shine with pipe-clay and his boots with blacking, and his arms are burnished and oily. taken alone, he is a little atom, a molecule; but he is complete in himself, with his food and lodging on his back, and his arms ready to his hand. he is one of a great system that obtains from india to nova scotia, and from bermuda to africa and australia; and he shows that he knows this in the way in which he holds up his chin and kicks out his legs as he tramps back and forward guarding the big rock at his back. and facing him, half a mile away, you will see a tall handsome man seated on a stone, with the tails of his long coat wrapped warmly around his legs, and with his gun leaning against another rock while he rolls a cigarette; and then, with his hands in his pockets, he gazes through the smoke at the sky above and the sea on either side, and wonders when he will be paid his peseta a day for fighting and bleeding for his country. this helps to make you understand how six thousand half-starved englishmen held gibraltar for four years against the army of spain. this is about all that you can see of gibraltar as a fortress. you hear, of course, of much more, and you can guess at a great deal. up above, where the signal station is, and where no one, not even an officer in uniform not engaged on the works, is allowed to go, are the real fortifications. what looks like a rock is a monster gun painted gray, or a tree hides the mouth of another. and in this forbidden territory are great cannon which are worked from the lowest ramparts. these are the present triumphs of gibraltar. before they came, the clouds which shut out the sight of the rock as well as the rest of the world from its summit rendered the great pieces of artillery there as useless in bad weather as they are harmless in times of peace. the very elements threatened to war against the english, and a shower of rain or a veering wind might have altered the fortunes of a battle. but a clever man named watkins has invented a position-finder, by means of which those on the lowest ramparts, well out of the clouds, can aim the great guns on the summit at a vessel unseen by the gunners lost in the mist above, and by electricity fire a shot from a gun a half-mile above them so that it will strike an object many miles off at sea. it will be a very strange sensation to the captain of such a vessel when he finds her bombarded by shells that belch forth from a drifting cloud. no stranger has really any idea of the real strength of this fortress, or in what part of it its real strength lies. not one out of ten of its officers knows it. gibraltar is a grand and grim practical joke; it is an armed foe like the army in _macbeth_, who came in the semblance of a wood, or like the wooden horse of troy that held the pick of the enemy's fighting-men. what looks like a solid face of rock is a hanging curtain that masks a battery; the blue waters of the bay are treacherous with torpedoes; and every little smiling village of spain has been marked down for destruction, and has had its measurements taken as accurately as though the english batteries had been playing on it already for many years. the rock is undermined and tunnelled throughout, and food and provisions are stored away in it to last a siege of seven years. telephones and telegraphs, signal stations for flagging, search-lights, and other such devilish inventions, have been planted on every point, and only the governor himself knows what other modern improvements have been introduced into the bowels of this mountain or distributed behind bits of landscape gardening on its surface. on the 25th of february, at half-past ten in the morning, three guns were fired in rapid succession from the top of the rock, and the windows shook. three guns mean that gibraltar is about to be attacked by a fleet of war-ships, and that "england expects every man to do his duty." so i went out to see him do it. men were running through the streets trailing their guns, and officers were galloping about pulling at their gloves, and bodies of troops were swinging along at a double-quick, which always makes them look as though they were walking in tight boots, and bugles were calling, and groups of men, black and clearly cut against the sky, were excitedly switching the air with flags from every jutting rock and every rampart of the garrison. [illustration: signal station on the top of the rock] behind the ramparts, quite out of sight of the vessels in the bay, were many hundreds of infantrymen with rifles in hand, and only waiting for a signal to appear above the coping of the wall to empty their guns into the boats of the enemy. the enlisted men, who enjoy this sort of play, were pleased and interested; the officers were almost as calm as they would be before a real enemy, and very much bored at being called out and experimented with. the real object of the preparation for defence that morning was to learn whether the officers at different points could communicate with the governor as he rode rapidly from one spot to another. this was done by means of flags, and although the officer who did the flagging for the governor's party had about as much as he could do to keep his horse on four legs, the experiment was most successful. it was a very pretty and curious sight to see men talking a mile away to a party of horsemen going at full gallop. the life of a subaltern of the british army, who belongs to a smart regiment, and who is stationed at such a post as gibraltar, impresses you as being as easy and satisfactory a state of existence as a young and unmarried man could ask. he has always the hope that some day--any day, in fact--he will have a chance to see active service, and so serve his country and distinguish his name. and while waiting for this chance he enjoys the good things the world brings him with a clear conscience. he has duties, it is true, but they did not strike me as being wearing ones, or as threatening nervous prostration. as far as i could see, his most trying duty was the number of times a day he had to change his clothes, and this had its ameliorating circumstance in that he each time changed into a more gorgeous costume. there was one youth whom i saw in four different suits in two hours. when i first noticed him he was coming back from polo, in boots and breeches; then he was directing the firing of a gun, with a pill-box hat on the side of his head, a large pair of field-glasses in his hand, and covered by a black and red uniform that fitted him like a jersey. a little later he turned up at a tennis party at the governor's in flannels; and after that he came back there to dine in the garb of every evening. when the subaltern dines at mess he wears a uniform which turns that of the first city troop into what looks in comparison like a second-hand and ready-made garment. the officers of the 13th somerset light infantry wore scarlet jackets at dinner, with high black silk waistcoats bordered with two inches of gold lace. the jackets have gold buttons sewed along every edge that presents itself, and offer glorious chances for determining one's future by counting "poor man, rich man, beggar-man, thief." when eighteen of these jackets are placed around a table, the chance civilian feels and looks like an undertaker. dining at mess is a very serious function in a british regiment. at other times her majesty's officers have a reticent air; but at dinner, when you are a guest, or whether you are a guest or not, there is an intent to please and to be pleased which is rather refreshing. we have no regimental headquarters in america, and owing to our officers seeking promotion all over the country, the regimental _esprit de corps_ is lacking. but in the english army regimental feeling is very strong; father and son follow on in the same regiment, and now that they are naming them for the counties from which they are recruited, they are becoming very close corporations indeed. at mess the traditions of the regiment come into play, and you can learn then of the actions in which it has been engaged from the engravings and paintings around the walls, and from the silver plate on the table and the flags stacked in the corner. [illustration: cannons masked by bushes] when a man gets his company he presents the regiment with a piece of plate, or a silver inkstand, or a picture, or something which commemorates a battle or a man, and so the regimental headquarters are always telling a story of what has been in the past and inspiring fine deeds for the future. each regiment has its peculiarity of uniform or its custom at mess, which is distinctive to it, and which means more the longer it is observed. those in authority are trying to do away with these signs and differences in equipment, and are writing themselves down asses as they do so. you will notice, for instance, if you are up in such things, that the sergeants of the 13th light infantry wear their sashes from the left shoulder to the right hip, as officers do, and not from the right shoulder, as sergeants should. this means that once in a great battle every officer of the 13th was killed, and the sergeants, finding this out, and that they were now in command, changed their sashes to the other shoulder. and the officers ever after allowed them to do this, as a tribute to their brothers in command who had so conspicuously obliterated themselves and distinguished their regiment. there are other traditions, such as that no one must mention a woman's name at mess, except the title of one woman, to which they rise and drink at the end of the dinner, when the sergeant gives the signal to the band-master outside, and his men play the national anthem, while the bandmaster comes in, as mr. kipling describes him in "the drums of the fore and aft," and "takes his glass of port-wine with the orfficers." the sixtieth, or the royal rifles, for instance, wear no marks of rank at the mess, in order to express the idea that there they are all equal. this regiment had once for its name the king's american rifles, and under that name it took quebec and montreal, and i had placed in front of me at mess one night a little silver statuette in the equipment of a continental soldier, except that his coat, if it had been colored, would have been red, and not blue. he was dated 1768. in the mess-room are pictures of the regiment swarming over the heights of quebec, storming the walls of delhi, and running the gauntlet up the nile as they pressed forward to save gordon. all of this goes to make a subaltern feel things that are good for him to feel. every day at gibraltar there is tennis, and bands playing in the alameda, and parades, or riding-parties across the neutral ground into spain, and teas and dinners, at which the young ladies of the place dance spanish dances, and twice a week the members of the calpe hunt meet in spain, and chase foxes across the worst country that any englishman ever rode over in pink. there are no fences, but there are ravines and cañons and precipices, down and up and over which the horses scramble and jump, and over which they will, if the rider leaves them alone, bring him safely. and if you lose the rest of the field, you can go to an old spanish inn like that which don quixote visited, with drunken muleteers in the court-yard, and the dining-room over the stable, and with beautiful dark-eyed young women to give you omelet and native wine and black bread. or, what is as amusing, you can stop in at the officer's guard-room at the north front, and cheer that gentleman's loneliness by taking tea with him, and drying your things before his fire while he cuts the cake, and the women of the party straighten their hats in front of his glass, and two tommies go off for hot water. there was a very entertaining officer guarding the north front one night, and he proved so entertaining that neither of us heard the sunset gun, and so when i reached the gate i found it locked, and the bugler of the guard who take the keys to the governor each night was sounding his bugle half-way up the town. there was a dark object on a wall to which i addressed all my arguments and explanations, which the object met with repeated requests to "move on, now," in the tone of expostulation with which a london policeman addresses a very drunken man. [illustration: tea in the officers' quarters] i knew that if i tried to cross the neutral ground i would be shot at for a smuggler; for, owing to gibraltar's being a free port of entry, these gentlemen buy tobacco there, and carry it home each night, or run it across the half-mile of neutral ground strapped to the backs of dogs. so i wandered back again to the entertaining officer, and he was filled with remorse, and sent off a note of entreaty to his excellency's representative, to whom he referred as a d. a. a. g., and whose name, he said, was jones. we then went to the mess of the officers guarding the different approaches, and these gentlemen kindly offered me their own beds, proposing that they themselves should sleep on three chairs and a pile of overcoats; all except one subaltern, who excused his silence by saying diffidently that he fancied i would not care to sleep in the fever camp, of which he had charge. i had seen the officer of the keys pass every night, and the guards turn out to salute the keys, and i had rather imagined that it was more or less of a form, and that the pomp and circumstance were all there was of it. i did not believe that the rock was really closed up at night like a safe with a combination lock. but i know now that it is. a note came back from the mysterious d. a. a. g. saying i could be admitted at eleven; but it said nothing at all about sentries, nor did the entertaining officer. subalterns always say "officer" when challenged, and the sentry always murmurs, "pass, officer, and all's well," in an apologetic growl. but i suppose i did not say "officer" as i had been told to do, with any show of confidence, for every sentry who appeared that night--and there seemed to be a regiment of them--would not have it at all, and wanted further data, and wanted it quick. even if you have an order from a d. a. a. g. named jones, it is very difficult to explain about it when you don't know whether to speak of him as the d. a. a. g. or as general jones, and especially when a young and inexperienced shadow is twisting his gun about so that the moonlight plays up and down the very longest bayonet ever issued by a civilized nation. they were not nice sentries, either, like those on the rock, who stand where you can see them, and who challenge you drowsily, like cabmen, and make the empty streets less lonely than otherwise. they were, on the contrary, fierce and in a terrible hurry, and had a way of jumping out of the shadow with a rattle of the gun and a shout that brought nerve-storms in successive shocks. to make it worse, i had gone over the post, while waiting for word from the d. a. a. g., to hear the sentries recite their instructions to the entertaining officer. they did this rather badly, i thought, the only portion of the rules, indeed, which they seemed to have by heart being those which bade them not to allow cows to trespass "without a permit," which must have impressed them by its humor, and the fact that when approached within fifty yards they were "to fire low." i found when challenged that night that this was the only part of their instructions that i also could remember. this was the only trying experience of my stay in gibraltar, and it is brought in here as a compliment to the force that guards the north front. for of them, and the rest of the inhabitants and officers of the garrison, any one who visits there can only think well; and i hope when the rock is attacked, as it never will be, that they will all cover themselves with glory. it never will be attacked, for the reason that the american people are the only people clever enough to invent a way of taking it, and they are far too clever to attempt an impossible thing. ii tangier a great many thousand years ago hercules built the mountain of abyla and its twin mountain which we call gibraltar. it was supposed to mark the limits of the unknown world, and it would seem from casual inspection, as i suggested in the last chapter, that it serves the same purpose to this day. men have crept into africa and crept out again, like flies over a ceiling, and they have gained much renown at africa's expense for having done so. they have built little towns along its coasts, and run little rocking, bumping railroads into its forests, and dragged launches over its cataracts, and partitioned it off among emperors and powers and trading companies, without having ventured into the countries they pretend to have subdued. but from paul du chaillu to w. a. chanler, "the last explorer," as he has been called, just how much more do we know of africa than did the romans whose bridges still stand in tangier? the "last explorer" sounds well, and is distinctly a _mot_, but there will be other explorers to go, and perhaps to return. there are still a few things for us to learn. the spaniards and the pilgrim fathers touched the unknown world of america only four hundred years ago, and to-day any commercial traveller can tell you, with the aid of an a b c railroad guide, the name of every town in any part of it. but turks and romans and spaniards, and, of late, english and germans and french, have been pecking and nibbling at africa like little mice around a cheese, and they are still nibbling at the rind, and know as little of the people they "protect," and of the countries they have annexed and colonized, as did hannibal and scipio. the american forests have been turned into railroad ties and telegraph poles, and the american indian has been "exterminated" or taught to plough and to wear a high hat. the cowboy rides freely over the prairies; the indian agent cheats the indian--the indian does not cheat him; the germans own milwaukee and cincinnati; the irish rule everywhere; even the much-abused chinaman hangs out his red sign in every corner of the country. there is not a nation of the globe that has not its hold upon and does not make fortunes out of the continent of america; but the continent of africa remains just as it was, holding back its secret, and still content to be the unknown world. you need not travel far into africa to learn this; you can find out how little we know of it at its very shore. this city of tangier, lying but three hours off from gibraltar's civilization, on the nearest coast of africa, can teach you how little we or our civilized contemporaries understand of these barbarians and of their barbarous ways. a few months since england sent her ambassador to treat with the sultan of morocco; it was an untaught blackamoor opposed to a diplomat and a gentleman, and a representative of the most civilized and powerful of empires; and we have stephen bonsal's picture of this ambassador and his suite riding back along the hot, sandy trail from fez, baffled and ridiculed and beaten. so that when i was in tangier, half-naked moors, taking every white stranger for an englishman, would point a finger at me and cry, "your sultana a fool; the sultan only wise." which shows what a superior people we are when we get away from home, and how well the english understand the people they like to protect. tangier lies like a mass of drifted snow on the green hills below, and over the point of rock on which stands its fortress, and from which waves the square red flag of morocco. it is a fine place spoiled by civilization. and not a nice quality of civilization either. back of it, in tetuan or fez, you can understand what tangier once was and see the moor at his best. there he lives in the exclusiveness which his religion teaches him is right--an exclusiveness to which the hauteur of an englishman, and his fear that some one is going to speak to him on purpose, become a gracious manner and suggest undue familiarity. you see the moor at his best in tangier too, but he is never in his complete setting as he is in the inland cities, for when you walk abroad in tangier you are constantly brought back to the new world by the presence and abodes of the foreign element; a french shop window touches a bazar, and a moor in his finest robes is followed by a spaniard in his black cape or an englishman in a tweed suit, for the englishman learns nothing and forgets nothing. he may live in tangier for years, but he never learns to wear a burnoose, or forgets to put on the coat his tailor has sent him from home as the latest in fashion. the first thing which meets your eye on entering the harbor at tangier is an immense blue-and-white enamel sign asking you to patronize the english store for groceries and provisions. it strikes you as much more barbarous than the moors who come scrambling over the vessel's side. [illustration: bread merchants at the gate] they come with a rush and with wild yells before the little steamer has stopped moving, and remind you of their piratical ancestors. they look quite as fierce, and as they throw their brown bare legs over the bulwarks and leap and scramble, pushing and shouting in apparently the keenest stage of excitement and rage, they only need long knives between their teeth and a cutlass to convince you that you are at the mercy of the barbary pirates, and not merely of hotel porters and guides. my guide was a moor named mahamed. i had him about a week, or rather, to speak quite correctly, he had me. i do not know how he effected my capture, but he went with me, i think, because no one else would have him, and he accordingly imposed on my good-nature. as we say a man is "good-natured" when there is absolutely nothing else to be said for him, i hope when i say this that i shall not be accused of trying to pay myself a compliment. mahamed was a tall moor, with a fine array of different-colored robes and coats and undercoats, and a large white turban around his fez, which marked the fact that he was either married or that he had made a pilgrimage to mecca. he followed me from morning until night, with the fidelity of a lamb, and with its sheeplike stupidity. no amount of argument or money or abuse could make him leave my side. mahamed was not even picturesque, for he wore a large pair of blue spectacles and congress gaiters. this hurt my sense of the fitness of things very much. his idea of serving me was to rush on ahead and shove all the little donkeys and blind beggars and children out of my way, at which the latter would weep, and i would have to go back and bribe them into cheerfulness again. in this way he made me most unpopular with the masses, and cost me a great deal in trying to buy their favor. i was never so completely at the mercy of any one before, and i hope he found me "intelligent, courteous, and a good linguist." as a matter of fact, there is very little need of a guide in tangier. it has but few show places, for the place itself is the show. you can find your best entertainment in picking your way through its winding, narrow streets, and in wandering about the open market-places. the highways of tangier are all very crooked and very steep. they are also very uneven and dirty, and one walks sometimes for hundreds of yards in a maze of dark alleys and little passageways walled in by whitewashed walls, and sheltered from the sun by archways and living-rooms hanging from one side of the street to the other. green and blue doorways, through which one must stoop to enter, open in from the street, and you are constantly hearing them shut as you pass, as some of the women of the household recognize the presence of a foreigner. you are never quite sure as to what you will meet in the streets or what may be displayed at your elbow before the doors of the bazars. the odors of frying meat and of fresh fruit and of herbs, and of soap in great baskets, and of black coffee and hasheesh, come to you from cafés and tiny shops hardly as big as a packing-box. these are shut up at night by two half-doors, of which the upper one serves as a shield from the sun by day and the lower as a pair of steps. in the wider streets are the bazars, magnificent with color and with the glitter of gold lace and of brass plaques and silver daggers; handsome, comfortable-looking moors sit crossed-legged in the middle of their small extent like soldiers in a sentry-box, and speak leisurely with their next-door neighbor without gesture, unless they grow excited over a bargain, and with a haughty contempt for the passing christian. there is always something beneficial in feeling that you are thoroughly despised; and when a whole community combines to despise you, and looks over your head gravely as you pass, you begin to feel that those moors who do not apparently hold you in contempt are a very poor and middle-class sort of people, and you would much prefer to be overlooked by a proud moor than shaken hands with by a perverted one. but the pride of the rich moorish gentlemen is nothing compared to the fanatic intolerance of the poor farmers from the country of the tribes who come in on market-day, and who hate the christian properly as the koran tells them they should. they stalk through the narrow street with both eyes fixed on a point far ahead of them, with head and shoulders erect and arms swinging. they brush against you as though you were a camel or a horse, and had four legs on which to stand instead of two. sometimes a foreigner forgets that these men from the desert, where the foreign element has not come, are following out the religious training of a lifetime, and strikes at one of them with his riding-whip, and then takes refuge in a consulate and leaves on the next boat. i find it very hard not to sympathize with the moors. the englishman is always preaching that an englishman's house is his castle, and yet he invades this country, he and his french and spanish and american cousins, and demands that not only he shall be treated well, but that any native of the country, any subject of the sultan, who chooses to call himself an american or an englishman shall be protected too. of course he knows that he is not wanted there; he knows he is forcing himself on the barbarian, and that all the barbarian has ever asked of him is to be let alone. but he comes, and he rides around in his baggy breeches and varnished boots, and he gets up polo games and cricket matches, and gallops about in a pink coat after foxes, and asks for bitter ale, and complains because he cannot get his bath, and all the rest of it, quite as if he had been begged to come and to stop as long as he liked. sometimes you find a foreigner who tries to learn something of these people, a man like the late mr. leared or "bébé" carleton, who can speak all their dialects, and who has more power with the sultan than has any foreign minister, and who, if the sultan will not pay you for the last shipment of guns you sent him, or for the grand-piano for the harem, is the man to get you your money. but the average foreign resident, as far as i can see, neither adopts the best that the moor has found good, nor introduces what the moor most needs, and what he does not know or care enough about to introduce for himself. tangier, for instance, is excellently adapted by nature for the purposes of good sanitation, but the arrangements are as bad and primitive as they were before a foreigner came into the place. they consist in dumping the refuse of the streets, into which everything is thrown, over the sea-wall out on the rocks below, where the pigs gather up what they want, and the waves wash the remainder back on the coast. [illustration: sanitary outfit dumping refuse over the wall] if some of the foreign ministers would use their undoubted influence with the bashaw to amend this, instead of introducing point-to-point pony races, they might in time show some reason for their invasion of morocco other than the curious and obvious one that they all grow rich there while doing nothing. the foreign resident has a very great contempt for the moor. he says the moor is a great liar and a rogue. when people used to ask walter scott if it was he who wrote the waverley novels he used to tell them it was not, and he excused this afterwards by saying that if you are asked an impertinent or impossible question you have the right not to answer it or to tell an untruth. the very presence of the foreigner is an impertinence in the eyes of the moor, and so he naturally does not feel severe remorse when he baffles the foreign invader, and does it whenever he can. as a matter of fact, the foreign invader at tangier is not, in a number of cases, in a position in which he can gracefully throw down gauntlets. there is something about these hot, raw countries, hidden out of the way of public opinion and police courts and the respectability which drives a gig, that makes people forget the rules and axioms laid down in the temperate zone for the guidance of tax-payers and all reputable citizens. as the sailors say, "there is no sunday south of the equator." it is hard to tell just what it is, but the sun, or the example of the barbarians, or the fact that the world is so far away, breeds queer ideas, and one hears stories one would not care to print as long as the law of libel obtains in the land. you have often read in novels, especially french novels, or have heard men on the stage say: "come, let us leave this place, with its unjust laws and cruel bigotry. we will go to some unknown corner of the earth, where we will make a new home. and there, under a new flag and a new name, we will forget the sad past, and enter into a new world of happiness and content." when you hear a man on the stage say that, you can make up your mind that he is going to tangier. it may be that he goes there with somebody else's money, or somebody else's wife, or that he has had trouble with a check; or, as in the case of one young man who was fêted and dined there, had robbed a diamond store in brooklyn, and is now in sing sing; or, as in the case of a recent american consul, had sold his protection for two hundred dollars to any one who wanted it, and was recalled under several clouds. and you hear stories of ministers who retire after receiving an income of a few hundred pounds a year with two hundred thousand dollars they have saved out of it, and of cruelty and bursts of sudden passion that would undoubtedly cause a lynching in the chivalric and civilized states of alabama or tennessee. and so when i heard why several of the people of tangier had come there, and why they did not go away again, i began to feel that the barbarian, whose forefathers swept spain and terrorized the whole of catholic europe, had more reason than he knew for despising the christian who is waiting to give to his country the benefits of civilization. tangier's beauty lies in so many different things--in the monk-like garb of the men and in the white muffled figures of the women; in the brilliancy of its sky, and of the sea dashing upon the rocks and tossing the feluccas with their three-cornered sails from side to side; and in the green towers of the mosques, and the listless leaves of the royal palms rising from the centre of a mass of white roofs; and, above all, in the color and movement of the bazars and streets. the streets represent absolute equality. they are at the widest but three yards across, and every one pushes, and apparently every one has something to sell, or at least something to say, for they all talk and shout at once, and cry at their donkeys or abuse whoever touches them. a water-carrier, with his goat-skin bag on his back and his finger on the tube through which the water comes, jostles you on one side, and a slave as black and shiny as a patent-leather boot shoves you on the other as he makes way for his master on a fine white arabian horse with brilliant trappings and a huge contempt for the donkeys in his way. it is worth going to tangier if for no other reason than to see a slave, and to grasp the fact that he costs anywhere from a hundred to five hundred dollars. to the older generation this may not seem worth while, but to the present generation--those of it who were born after richmond was taken--it is a new and momentous sensation to look at a man as fine and stalwart and human as one of your own people, and feel that he cannot strike for higher wages, or even serve as a parlor-car porter or own a barbershop, but must work out for life the two hundred dollars his owner paid for him at fez. there is more movement in tangier than i have ever noticed in a place of its size. every one is either looking on cross-legged from the bazars and coffee-shops, or rushing, pushing, and screaming in the street. it is most bewildering; if you turn to look after a particularly magnificent moor, or a half-naked holy man from the desert with wild eyes and hair as long as a horse's mane, you are trodden upon by a string of donkeys carrying kegs of water, or pushed to one side by a soldier with a gun eight feet long. there is something continually interesting in the muffled figures of the women. they make you almost ashamed of the uncovered faces of the american women in the town; and, in the lack of any evidence to the contrary, you begin to believe every moorish woman or girl you meet is as beautiful as her eyes would make it appear that she is. those of the moorish girls whose faces i saw were distinctly handsome; they were the women benjamin constant paints in his pictures of algiers, and about whom pierre loti goes into ecstasies in his book on tangier. their robe or cloak, or whatever the thing is that they affect, covers the head like a hood, and with one hand they hold one of its folds in front of the face as high as their eyes, or keep it in place by biting it between their teeth. the only time that i ever saw the face of any of them was when i occasionally eluded mahamed and ran off with a little guide called isaac, the especial protector of two american women, who farmed him out to me when they preferred to remain in the hotel. he is a particularly beautiful youth, and i noticed that whenever he was with me the cloaks of the women had a fashion of coming undone, and they would lower them for an instant and look at isaac, and then replace them severely upon the bridge of the nose. then isaac would turn towards me with a shy conscious smile and blush violently. isaac says that the young men of tangier can tell whether or not a girl is pretty by looking at her feet. it is true that their feet are bare, but it struck me as being a somewhat reckless test for selecting a bride. i will recommend isaac to whoever thinks of going to tangier. he speaks eight languages, is eighteen years old, wears beautiful and barbarous garments, and is always happy. he is especially good at making bargains, and he entertained me for many half-hours while i sat and watched him fighting over two dollars more or less with the proprietors of the bazars. he was an antagonist worthy of the oldest and proudest moor in tangier. he had no respect for their rage or their contempt or their proffered bribes or their long white beards. sometimes he would laugh them to scorn--them and their prices; and again he would talk to them sadly and plaintively; and again he would stamp and rage and slap his hands at them and rush off with a great show of disgust, until they called him back again, when he and they would go over the performance once more with unabated interest. mahamed always paid them what they asked, and got his commission from them later, as a guide should; but isaac would storm and finally beat them down one-half. isaac can be found at the calpe hotel, and is welcome to whatever this notice may be worth to him. [illustration: a woman of tangier] i had read in books on morocco and had been given to understand that when you were told that the price of anything in a bazar was worth three dollars, you should offer one, and that then the moor would cry aloud to allah to take note of the insult, and would ask you to sit down and have a cup of coffee, and that he would then beat you up and you would beat him down, and that at the end of two or three hours you would get what you wanted for two dollars. it struck me that this, if one had several months to spare and wanted anything badly enough, might be rather amusing. the first thing i saw that i wanted badly was a long gun, for which the moor asked me twelve dollars. i offered him eight. i then waited to see him tear his beard and unwrap his turban and cry aloud to allah; but he did none of these things. he merely put the gun back in its place and continued the conversation, which i had so flippantly interrupted, with a long-bearded friend. and no further remarks on my part affected him in the least, and i was forced to go away feeling very much ashamed and very mean. the next day a man at the hotel brought in the gun, having paid fourteen dollars for it, and said he would not sell it for fifty. we would pay much more than that for it at home, which shows that you cannot always follow guide-books. there are only five things the guides take you to see in tangier--the café chantant, the governor's palace, the prisons, and the harem, to which men are not admitted. they also take you to see the markets, but you can see them for yourself. the markets are bare, open places covered with stones and lined with bazars, and on market-days peopled with thousands of muffled figures selling or trying to sell herbs and eggs and everything else that is eatable, from dates to haunches of mutton. it is a wonderfully picturesque sight, with the sun trickling through the palm-leaf mats overhead on the piles of yellow melons at your feet, and with strings of camels dislocating their countenances over their grain, and dancing-men and snake-charmers and story-tellers, as eloquent as actors, clamoring on every side. the café chantant is a long room lined with mats, and with rugs scattered over the floor, on which sit musicians and the regular customers of the place, who play cards and smoke long pipes, with which they rap continually on the tin ash-holders. the music is very strange, to say the least, and the singing very startling, full of sudden pauses, and beginning again after one of these when you think the song is over. it is not a particularly exciting place to visit, but there is no choice between that and the hotel smoking-room. tangier is not a town where one can move about much at night. there is also a place where the guests tell you that you can see moorish women dance the dance which so startled paris in the algerian exhibit at the exposition. as i had no desire to be startled in that way again, i did not go to see them, and so cannot say what they are like. but it is quite safe to say that any visitor to tangier who thinks he is seeing anything that is real and native to the home life of the people, and that is not a show gotten up by the guides, is going to be greatly taken in. the harem to which they lead women is not a harem at all, but the home of the widow of an ex-governor, who sits with her daughters for strange women to look at. it is a most undignified proceeding on the part of the widow of a dead bashaw, and no one but the guides know what she is doing. i came to find out about it through some american women who went there with isaac in the morning, and were taken to call at the same place by an english lady resident in the afternoon. the english woman laughed at them for thinking they had seen the interior of a harem, and they did not tell her that they had already visited her friends and paid their franc for admittance to their society. the other show places are the governor's palace and the prisons. the palace is a very handsome moorish building, and the prisons are very dirty. all that the tourist can see of them is the little he can discern through a hole cut in the stout wooden door of each, which is the only exit and entrance. you cannot see much even then, for the prisoners, as soon as they discover a face at the opening, stick it full of the palm-leaf baskets that they make and sell in order to buy food. the government gives them neither water, which is expensive in tangier, nor bread, unless they are dying for want of it, but expects the family or friends of each criminal to see that he is kept alive until he has served out his term of imprisonment. [illustration: water-vender at the door of a private house] a great deal has been written about these prisons of the sultan, and of the cruelty shown to the inmates, notably of late by a mr. mackenzie in the london _times_. you are told that in tangier, within the four square walls of the prison, there are madmen and half-starved murderers and rebels, loaded with chains, dying of disease and want, who are tortured and starved until they die. for this reason no one in morocco is sentenced for more than ten or twelve years, so you are told, because he is sure to die before that time has expired. it seemed to me that if this were true it would be worth while to visit the prison and to tell what one saw there. when i was informed that, with the exception of two residents of tangier, no one has been allowed to enter the sultan's prison for the last _ten years_, i suspected that there must be something there which the sultan did not want seen: it was not a difficult deduction to make. so i set about getting into the prison. it is not at all necessary to go into the details of my endeavors, or to tell what proposals i made; it is quite sufficient to say that in every way i was eminently unsuccessful. it was interesting, however, to find a people to whom the arguments and inducements which had proved effective with one's own countrymen were foolish and incomprehensible. for two days i haunted the outer walls of the prison, and was smiled upon contemptuously by the bashaw's counsellors, who sat calmly in the cool hallway of the palace, and watched me kicking impatiently at the stones in the court-yard and broiling in the sun, while the governor or bashaw returned me polite expressions of his regret. i finally dragged the consul-general into it, and brought things to such a pass that i could see no way out of it but my admittance to the prison or a declaration of war from the united states. either event seemed to promise exciting and sensational developments. colonel mathews, the consul-general, did not, however, share my views, but arranged that i should have an audience with the bashaw, during the course of which he promised he would bring up the question of my admittance to the prison. on board the _fulda_, i had had the pleasure of sitting at table next to the rev. dr. henry m. field, the editor of the _evangelist_, and a distinguished traveller in many lands. while on the steamer i had twitted the doctor with not having seen certain phases of life with which, it seemed to me, he should be more familiar, and i offered, on finding we were making the same tour for the same purpose, to introduce him to bull-fights and pig-sticking and cafés chantants, and other incidents of foreign travel, of which he seemed to be ignorant. he refused my offer with dignity, but i think with some regret. i was, nevertheless, glad to find that he was in tangier, and that he was to be one of the party to call at the governor's palace. on learning of my desire to visit the prison dr. field added his petition to mine, and i am quite sure that colonel mathews wished we were both in the united states. we first called upon the sultan's minister of foreign affairs, who received us in a little room leading from a pretty portico near the street entrance. it was furnished, i was pained to note, not with divans and rugs, but with a set of red plush and walnut sofas and chairs, such as you would find in the salon of a third-rate french hotel. the minister of foreign affairs was a dear, kindly old gentleman, with a fine white beard down to his waist, but he had a cold in his head, and this kept him dabbing at his nose with a red bandanna handkerchief rolled up in a ball, which was not in keeping with the rest of his costume, nor with the dignity of his appearance. he and dr. field got on very well; they found out that they were both seventy years of age, and both highly esteemed in their different churches. indeed, the minister of foreign affairs was good enough to say, through colonel mathews, that dr. field had a good face, and one that showed he had led a religious life. he rather neglected me, and i was out of it, especially when both the doctor and the cabinet minister began hoping that allah would bless them both. i thought it most unorthodox language for dr. field to use. we then walked up the hill upon which stand the fort, the prisons, the treasury, and the governor's palace, and were received at the entrance to the latter by the same gentlemen who had for the last two days been enjoying my discomfiture. they were now most gracious in their manner, and bowed proudly and respectfully to colonel mathews as we passed between two rows of them and entered the hall of the palace. we went through three halls covered with colored tiles and topped with arches of ornamental scrollwork of intricate designs. at the extreme end of these rooms the bashaw stood waiting for us. he was the finest-looking moor i had seen; and i think the moorish gentleman, though it seems a strange thing to say, is the most perfect type of a gentleman that i have seen in any country. he is seldom less than six feet tall, and he carries his six feet with the erectness of a soldier and with the grace of a woman. the bones of his face are strong and well-placed, and he looks kind and properly self-respecting, and is always courteous. when you add to this clothing as brilliant and robes as clean and soft and white as a bride's, you have a very worthy-looking man. the bashaw towered above all of us. he wore brown and dark-blue cloaks, with a long under-waistcoat of light-blue silk, yellow shoes, and a white turban as big as a bucket, and his baggy trousers were as voluminous as letty lind's divided skirts. he could not speak english, but he shook hands with us, which moors do not do to one another, and walked on ahead through court-yards and halls and up stairways to a little room filled with divans and decorated with a carved ceiling and tiled walls. there we all sat down, and a soldier in a long red cloak and with numerous swords sticking out of his person gave us tea, and sweet cakes made entirely of sugar. as soon as we had finished one cup he brought in another, and, noticing this, i indulged sparingly; but the doctor finished his first, and then refused the rest, until the consul-general told him he must drink or be guilty of a breach of etiquette. [illustration: a street dancer] the bashaw and colonel mathews talked together, and we paid the governor long and laborious compliments, at which he smiled indulgently. he did not strike me as being at all overcome by them; he had, on the contrary, very much the air of a man of the world, and seemed rather to be bored, but too polite to say so. he looked exactly like salvini as othello. while the tea-drinking was going on we were making asides to colonel mathews, and urging him to propose our going into the prison, which he said he would do, but that it must be done diplomatically. we told him we would give all the prisoners bread and water, or a lump sum to the guards, or whatever he thought would please the bashaw best. he and the bashaw then began to talk about it, and the doctor and i looked consciously at the ceiling. the bashaw said that never since he had been governor of tangier had he allowed either a native or a foreigner to enter the prison; and that if a european did so, he would be torn to pieces by the fanatics imprisoned there, who would think they were pleasing allah by abusing an unbeliever. colonel mathews also added, on his own account, that we would probably catch some horrible disease. the more they did not want us to go, the more we wanted to go, the doctor rising to the occasion with a keenness and readiness of resource worthy of a new york reporter after a beat. i can pay him no higher compliment. after a long, loud, and excited debate the bashaw submitted, and the consul-general won. the first prison they showed us was the county jail, in which men are placed for a month or more. it was dirty and uninteresting, and we protested that it was not the one which the bashaw had described, and asked to be shown the one where the enemies of the government were incarcerated. colonel mathews called back the bashaw's soldiers, and we went on to the larger prison immediately adjoining. some time ago the inmates of this made a break for liberty, and forced open the one door which bars those inside from the outer world. the guards fired into the mass of them, and the place shows where the bullets struck. to prevent a repetition of this, three heavy bars were driven into the masonry around the door, so close together that it is impossible for more than one man to leave or enter the prison at one time even when the door is open. and the opening is so small that to do this he must either crawl in on his hands and knees, or lift himself up by the crossbar and swing himself in feet foremost. it impressed me as a particularly embarrassing way to make an entrance among a lot of people who meditated tearing you to pieces. i pointed this out to the doctor, but he was determined, though pale. so the guards swung the door in, and the first glimpse of a christian gentleman the prisoners had in ten years was a pair of yellow riding-boots which shot into space, followed by a young man, and a moment later by an elderly gentleman with a white tie. we made a combined movement to the middle of the prison, which was lighted from above by a square opening in the roof, protected by iron bars. this was the only light in the place. all around the four sides of the patio or court were rows of pillars supporting a portico, and back of these was a second and outer corridor opening into the porticos, and so into the patio. the whole place--patio, porticos, and outer corridor--was about as big as the stage of a new york theatre. it was paved with dirt and broken slabs, and littered with straw. there was no furniture of any sort. with the exception of the sink upon which we stood, directly under the opening in the roof, the place was in almost complete darkness, although the sun was shining brilliantly outside. i think there must have been about fifty or sixty men in the prison, and for a short time not one of them moved. they were apparently, to judge by the way they looked at us, as much startled as though we had ascended from a trap like goblins in a pantomime, and then half of them, with one accord, came scrambling towards us on their hands and knees. they were half naked, and their hair hung down over their eyes; and this, and their crawling towards us instead of walking, made them look more or less like animals. as they came forward there was a clanking of chains, and i saw that it was because their legs were fettered that they came as they did, and not standing erect like human beings. the guard who followed us in was over two minutes in getting the door fastened behind him, and my mind was more occupied with this fact than with what i saw before me; for it seemed to me that if there was any tearing to pieces to be gone through with, i should hate to have to wait that long while the door was being opened again. this thought, with the shock of seeing thirty wild men moving upon us out of complete darkness on their hands and knees, was the only sensation of any interest that i received while visiting the prison. [illustration: in the prison] the inmates looked exactly like the poorer of the moors outside, except that their hair was longer and their clothing was not so white. there was one man, however, quite as well dressed as any of the sultan's counsellors, and he seemed to be the only one who objected to our presence. the rest did nothing except to gratify their curiosity by staring at us; they did not even hold out their hands for money. they were very dirty and poorly clothed, and their long imprisonment had made them haggard and pale, and the iron bars around their legs gave them a certain interest. the atmosphere of the place was horribly foul, but not worse than the atmosphere of either the men's or women's ward at night in a precinct station-house in new york city. indeed, i was not so much impressed with the horrors of the sultan's prison as with the fact that our own are so little better, considering our advanced civilization. i do not mean our large prisons, but the cells and the vagrants' rooms in the police stations. there the vagrant is given a sloping board and no ventilation. in tangier he is given straw and an opening in the roof. to be fair, you must compare a prisoner's condition in jail with that which he is accustomed to in his own home, and the homes of the moors of the lower class are as much like stables as their stables are like pigsties. the poor of tangier are allowed, through the kindness of the sultan, to sleep on the bare stones around the entrance to one of the mosques. for the poor sick there has been built a portico, about as large as a fifth avenue omnibus, opposite this same mosque. this is called the hospital of tangier. it is considered quite good enough for sick people and for those who have no homes. and every night you will see bundles of rags lying in the open street or under the narrow roof of the portico, exposed to the rain and to the bitter cold. if this, in the minds of the moors, is fair treatment of the sick and the poor, one cannot expect them to give their criminals and murderers white bread and a freshly rolled turban every morning. if i had seen horrible things in the sultan's prison--men starving, or too sick to rise, or chained to the walls, or half mad, or loathsome with disease--i should certainly have been glad to call the attention of other people to it, not from any philanthropic motives perhaps, but as a matter of news interest. i did not, however, see any of these things. dr. field, i believe, was differently impressed, and is of the opinion that the outer corridor contained many things much too horrible to believe possible. he compared this to dante's ninth circle of hell, and made a point of the fact that the guard had called me back when i walked towards it. i, however, went into it while the doctor and the guard were getting the door open for us to return, and saw nothing there but straw. it seemed to me to be the place where the men slept when the rain, coming through the opening in the roof, made it unpleasant for them to remain in the court. it may seem that my persistence in visiting the prison is inconsistent with what i have said of foreigners forcing themselves into places in morocco where they are not wanted, but i am quite sure that, had any one heard the stories told me of the horror of these jails, he would have considered himself justified in learning the truth about them; and i cannot understand why, if the members of the legations who tell these stories believe them, they have not used their influence to try and better the condition of the prisoners, rather than to introduce game-laws for the protection of partridges and wild-boars. it is, perhaps, gratifying to note that the two gentlemen of whom i spoke as having visited the prison in the last ten years were the american consul-general and another resident american. both of these contributed food to the prisoners, and reported what they had seen to our government. on the whole, tangier impresses one as a fine thing spoiled by civilization. barbarism with electric lights at night is not attractive. tangier to every traveller should be chiefly interesting as a stepping-stone towards tetuan or fez. tetuan can be reached in a day's journey, and there the moor is to be seen pure and simple, barbarous and beautiful. iii from gibraltar to cairo there are certain places and things with which the english novel has made us so familiar that it is not necessary for us to go far afield or to study guide-books in order to feel that we have known them intimately and always. we know paddington station as the place where the detective interrogates the porter who handled the luggage of the escaping criminal, and as the spot from which the governess takes her ticket for the country-house where she is to be persecuted by its mistress and loved by all the masculine members of the household. we also know that a p. and o. steamer is a means of conveyance almost as generally used by heroes and heroines of english fiction as a hansom cab. it is a vessel upon which the heroine meets her fate, either in the person of a young man on his way home from india, or by being shipwrecked on a desert island on her way to australia, and where the only other surviving passenger tattooes his will upon her back, leaves her all his fortune, and considerately dies. long ago a line of steamers ran to the peninsula of spain; later they shortened their sails, as the romans shortened their swords, and, like the romans, extended their boundaries to the orient. this line is now an institution with traditions and precedents and armorial bearings and time-hallowed jokes, and when you step upon the deck of a p. and o. steamer for the first time you feel that you are not merely an ordinary passenger, but a part of a novel in three volumes, or of a picture in the london _graphic_, and that all sorts of things are imminent and possible. it may not have occurred to you before embarking, but you know as soon as you come over the side that you expected to find the deck strewn with laces and fans and daggers from tangier, and photographs of gibraltar, and such other trifles for possible purchase by the outbound passengers, and that the crew would be little barefooted lascars in red turbans and long blue shirts, with a cumberband about their persons, and that you would be called to tiffin instead of to lunch. a fat little lascar balanced himself in the jolly-boat outlined against the sky and held aloft a red flag until the hawser swung clear of the propeller, when he raised a white flag above him and stood as motionless as the statue of liberty, while the _sutlej_ cleared europa point of gibraltar and headed towards the east. then he pattered across the deck and leaned over the side and crooned in a lazy, barbarous monotone to the waves. the sun fell upon the boat like a spell and turned us into sleepy and indolent fixtures wherever it first found us, and showed us the white-capped peaks of the sierra nevada of spain to the north, and the dim blue mountains of africa to the south. the deck below was scrubbed as white as a bread-board, and the masts and rigging threw black shadows on the awning overhead, and on every side the blue mediterranean and the bluer mediterranean sky met and sparkled and reflected each other's brilliancy like mirrors placed face to face. for four days the sun greeted the _sutlej_ by day and the moon by night, and the coast of africa played hide-and-seek along her starboard side, disappearing in a white mist of cloud for an hour or so, and then running along with us again in comfortable proximity. on the other side boats passed at almost as frequent intervals, and at such friendly range that one could count the people on the decks and read their flag signals without a glass. the loneliness of the north atlantic, where an iceberg stands for land, and only an occasional tramp steamer rests the eye, is as different to this sea as a railroad journey over the prairie is to the jaunt from new york to washington. on the second night out we see algiers, glowing and sparkling in the night like a million of fire-flies, and with the clear steady eye of the light-house warning us away, as though the quarantine had not warned some of us away already. and on the third night we pass cape bon, and can imagine tunis lying tantalizingly near us, behind its light-house, shut off also by the quarantine that the cholera at marseilles has made imperative wherever the french line of steamers touch. by this time the twoscore passengers have foregathered as they would never have done had they all been americans, or had there been three hundred of them, and their place of meeting the deck of a transatlantic steamer instead of one of this picturesque fleet, upon which you expect strange things to happen. [illustration: maltese peddlers] when an american goes to sea, he reads books, or he calculates the number of tons of coal it is taking to run the vessel at that rate of speed, and he determines that rate of speed by counting the rise and fall of the piston-rod, with his watch in his hand; and when this ceases to amuse him he plays cards in the smoking-room or holds pools on the run and on the pilot's number. the englishman joins in these latter amusements, because nothing better offers. but when his foot is on his native heath or on the deck of one of his own vessels, he demonstrates his preference for that sort of entertainment which requires exercise and little thought. if it is at a country-house, he plays games which entail considerable running about, and at picnics he enjoys "throw the handkerchief," and on board ship he plays cricket and other games dear to the heart of the american at the age of five. this is partly because he always exercises and likes moving about, as americans do not, and because the reading of books (except such books as _mr. potter of texas_, which, i firmly believe, every englishman i ever met has read, and upon which they have bestowed the most unqualified approval as the truest picture of american life and character they have ever found) entertains him for but a very short period at a time. so a netting is placed about the upper deck for him, and he plays cricket; not only he, but his wife and his sister and his mother and the unattached young ladies under the captain's care, who are going out to india, presumably to be met at the wharf by prospective husbands. there is something most charming in the absolute equality which this sport entails, and the seriousness with which the english regard it. we could not in america expect a white-haired lady with spectacles to bowl overhand, or to see that it is considered quite as a matter of course that she should do it by the member of the last oxford eleven, nor would our young women be able to hold a hot ball, or to take it with the hands crossed and only partly open, and not palm to palm and wide apart. an american, as a rule, walks in order that he may reach a certain point, but the englishman walks for the sake of the walking. and he plays games, also, apparently for the exercise there is in them; games in which people sit in a circle and discuss whether love or reason should guide them in going into matrimony do not appeal to him so strongly as do "oranges and lemons," or "where are you, jacob?" which is a very fine game, in which an early training in sliding to bases gives you a certain advantage. it is certainly instructive to hear a captain who got his company through storming fort nilt last year in the pamir inquire, anxiously, "oranges or lemons? yes, i know. but _which_ should i say, old chap? i'm a little rusty in the game, you know." if people can get back to the days when they were children by playing games, or in any other way, no one can blame them. the island of gozo rose up out of the sea on the fourth day--a yellow rib of rock on the right, with houses and temples on it--and demonstrated how few days of water are necessary to rob one's memory of the usual look of a house. one would imagine by the general interest in them that we had spent the last few years of our lives in tents, or in the arctic regions under huts of snow and ice. and then the ship heads in towards malta, and instead of dropping anchor and waiting for a tender, glides calmly into what is apparently its chief thoroughfare. it is like a venice of the sea, and you feel as though you were intruding in a gentleman's front yard. the houses and battlements and ramparts lie close on either side, so near that one could toss a biscuit into the hands of the tommies smoking on the guns, or the natives lounging on the steps that run from the front doors into the sea itself. the yard-arms reach above the line of the house-tops, and the bowsprit seems to threaten havoc with the window-panes of the custom-house. we are not apparently entering a harbor, but steaming down the main street of a city--a city of yellow limestone, with streets, walls, houses, and waste places all of yellow limestone. we might, for all the disturbance we are making, be moving forward in a bark canoe, and not in an ocean steamer drawing twenty-five feet of water. and then when the anchor drops, dozens of little boats, yellow and green and blue, with high posts at the bow and sterns like those on gondolas, shoot out from the steps, and their owners clamor for the proud privilege of carrying us over the few feet of water which runs between the line of houses and the ship's sides. [illustration: street of santa lucia, malta] there was at the centennial exposition the head of a woman cut in butter, which attracted much attention from the rural visitors. for this they passed by the women painted on canvas or carved in marble, they were too like the real thing, and the countrymen probably knew how difficult it is to make butter into moulds. for some reason malta reminds you of this butter lady. it is a real city--with real houses and cathedral and streets, no doubt, but you have a feeling that they are not genuine, and that though it is very cleverly done, it is, after all, a city carved out of cheese or butter. some of the cheese is mouldy and covered with green, and some of the walls have holes in them, as has aerated bread or _schweitzerkase_, and the streets and the pavements, and the carved façades of the churches and opera-house, and the earth and the hills beyond--everything upon which your eye can rest is glaring and yellow, with not a red roof to relieve it; it is all just yellow limestone, and it looks like dutch cheese. it is like no other place exactly that you have ever seen. the approach into the canal-like harbor under the guns and the search-lights of the fortifications, the moats and drawbridges, and the glaring monotony of the place itself, which seems to have been cut out of one piece and painted with one brush, suggest those little toy fortresses of yellow wood which appear in the shop windows at christmas-time. of course the first and last thought one has of malta is that the island was the home of the order of the knights of st. john, or knights hospitallers. this order, which was the most noble of those of the days of mediæval chivalry, was composed of that band of warrior monks who waged war against the infidels, who kept certain vows, and who, under the banner of the white cross, became honored and feared throughout the then known world. their headquarters changed from place to place during the four hundred years that stretched from the eleventh century, when the order was first established, up to 1530, when charles v. made over malta and all its dependencies in perpetual sovereignty to the keeping of these knights. they had no sooner fortified the island than there began the nine months' siege of the turks, one of the most memorable sieges in history. when it was ended, the turks re-embarked ten thousand of the forty thousand men they had landed, and of the nine thousand knights present under the grand master jean de la valette when the siege had opened, but six hundred capable of bearing arms remained alive. the order continued in possession of their island until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the french, under general bonaparte, took it with but little trouble. the french in turn were besieged by maltese and english, and after two years capitulated. in 1814 the island was transferred to england. it now, in its monuments and its memories, speaks of the days of chivalry; but present and mixed with these is the ubiquitous red coat of the british soldier; and the eight-pointed maltese cross, which suggests ivanhoe, is placed side by side with the lion and the unicorn; the culverin has given way to the quick-throbbing maxim gun, the templar's sword to the lee-metford rifle, and the heroes of walter scott to the friends of mr. rudyard kipling. the most conspicuous relic of the french occupation is not a noble one. it is the penitential hood of the maltese woman--a strangely picturesque article of apparel, like a cowl or shaker bonnet, only much larger than the latter, and with a cape which hangs over the shoulders. the women hold the two projecting flaps of the hood together at the throat, and unless you are advancing directly towards them, their faces are quite invisible. the hoods and capes are black, and are worn as a penance for the frailty of the women of malta when the french took the place and robbed the churches, and pillaged the storehouses of the knights, and bore themselves with less restraint than the infidel turks had done. malta retains a slight suggestion of mediævalism in the garb of the capuchin monks, whose tonsured heads and bare feet and roped waists look like a masquerade in their close proximity to the young officers in tweeds and varnished boots. but one gets the best idea of the past from the great church of st. john, which is full of the trophies and gifts of the grand masters of the order, and floored with two thousand marble tombs of the knights themselves. each grand master vied with those who had preceded him in enriching this church, and each knight on his promotion made it a gift, so that to-day it is rich in these and wonderfully beautiful. this is the chief show-place, and the governor's palace is another, and, to descend from the sublimity of the past to the absurdity of the present, so is also the guard-room of the officer of the day, which generations of english subalterns have helped to decorate. each year a committee of officers go over the pictures on its walls and rub out the least amusing, and this survival of the fittest has resulted in a most entertaining gallery of black and white. the order of jerusalem, or of st. john, still obtains in europe, and those who can show fourteen quarterings on one side and twelve on the other are entitled to belong to it; but they are carpet knights, and wearing an enamel maltese cross on the left side of an evening coat is a different thing from carrying it on a shield for saracens to hack at. [illustration: brindisi] sicily showed itself for a few hours while the boat continued on its way to brindisi; and as that day happened to be the 4th of march, the captain of the _sutlej_ was asked to make a calculation for which there will be no further need for four years to come. this calculation showed at what point in the mediterranean ocean the _sutlej_ would be when a president was being inaugurated in washington, and at the proper time the passengers were invited to the cabin, and the fact that a government was changing into the hands of one who could best take care of it was impressed upon them in different ways. and later, after dinner, the captain of the _sutlej_ made a speech, and said things about the important event (which he insisted on calling an election) which was then taking place in america, and the english cheered and drank the new president's health, and the two americans on board, who fortunately were both good democrats, felt not so far from home as before. you must touch at brindisi, which is situated on the heel of the boot of italy, if you wish to go a part of the way by land from the east to london or from london to the east. and as many people prefer travelling forty-eight hours across the continent to rounding gibraltar, one hears often of brindisi, and pictures it as a shipping port of the importance of liverpool or marseilles. instead of which it is as desolate as a summer resort in midwinter, and is like that throughout the year. there was a long, broad stone wharf, and tall stucco houses behind, and banks of coal which suggested the rear approach to long island city, and the soft blue italian skies of which we had read were steely blue, and most of us wore overcoats. we lay bound fast to the wharf, with a plank thrown from the boat's side to the quay, for the day, and we had free permission to learn to walk on streets again for full twenty-four hours; but after facing the wind, and dodging guides who had nothing to show, we came back by preference to the clean deck and the steamer-chair. desperate-looking italian soldiers with feathers in their hats, and custom-house officers, and gendarmes paraded up and down the quay for our delectation, and a wicked little boy stood on the pier-head and sang "ta-ra-ra-boom-chi-ay," pointedly varying this knowledge of our several nationalities by crying: "i _say_, buy box matches. get out." this show of learning caused him to be regarded by his fellows with much envy, and they watched us to see how far we were impressed. [illustration: pillar of cæsar at brindisi] there are two things which need no newspaper advertising and which recognize no geographical lines; one is a pretty face and the other is a good song. i have seen photographs for sale of isabelle irving and lillian russell in as different localities as santiago in cuba, and rotterdam, and i saw a play-bill in san antonio, texas, upon which the countess dudley and the duchess of leinster were reproduced under the names of the walsh sisters. a good song will travel as far, changing its name, too, perhaps, and its words, but keeping the same melody that has pleased people in a different part of the world. when the moon came out at brindisi and hid the heaps of coal, and showed only the white houses and the pillar of cæsar, a party of young men with guitars and mandolins gathered under the bow and sang a song called "oh, caroline," which i had last heard francis wilson sing as a part of the score of "the lion-tamer," to very different words. as the scene of "the lion-tamer" is laid in sicily, the song was more or less in place; but the contrast between the dark-browed italian and mr. wilson's genial countenance which the song brought back was striking. and on the night after we had left brindisi, when the crew gave a concert, one of them sang "oh, promise me," and some one asked if the song had yet reached america. i did not undeceive him, but said it had. after brindisi the hands of the clock go back a few thousand years, and we see cethdonia, where ulysses owned much property, and crete, from whence st. paul set sail, with its long range of mountains covered with snow, and then we come back to the present near the island of zante, where the earthquake moved a month ago and swallowed up the homes of the people. the _sutlej_ had been going out of her course all of the fourth day in order to dodge possible islands thrown up by the earthquake, and she was late. that night, as she steamed forward at her best speed, the level oily sea fell back from her bows with a steady ripple as she cut it in two and turned it back out of the way. a light on the horizon, like a policeman's lantern, which changed to the burnt-out end of a match and back again to a bull's-eye, told us that beyond the light lay the level sands of egypt, almost as far-reaching and monotonous as the sea that touched its shore. [illustration: approach to ismaïlia by the suez canal] the force of habit is very strong on many people, and if they approach the land of the pharaohs and of cleopatra an hour after their usual bedtime, they feel no inclination to diverge from their usual habits on that account. when you consider how many hours there are for slumber, and how many are given to dances, you would think one hour of sleep might be spared out of a lifetime in order that you could see port said at night. there was a long line of lamps on the shore, like a gigantic row of footlights or a prairie fire along the horizon, and we passed towards this through buoys with red and green lights, with a long sea-wall reaching out on one side, and the natural reef of jagged rocks rising black out of the sea in the path of the moon on the other. then black boats shot out from the shore and assailed us with strange cries, and men in turbans and long robes, and negroes in what looked like sacking, and which probably was sacking, but which could not hide the suppleness and strength of their limbs, climbed up over the high sides. these were the coal-trimmers making way for the black islands, filled with black coal and blacker men, who made fast to the side and began feeding the vessel through a blazing hole like an open fireplace in her iron side. four braziers filled with soft coal burnt with a fierce red flame from the corners of the barges, and in this light from out of the depths half-naked negroes ran shrieking and crying with baskets of coal on their shoulders to the top of an inclined plank, and stood there for a second in the full glare of the opening until one could see the whites of their eyes and the sweat glistening on the black faces. then they pitched the coal forward into the lighted opening, as though they were feeding a fire, and disappeared with a jump downward into the pit of blackness. the coal dust rose in great curtains of mist, through which the figures of the men and the red light showed dimly and with wavering outline, like shadows in an iron-mill, and through it all came their cries and shouts, and the roar of the coal blocks as they rattled down into the hold. port said occupies the same position to the waters of the world as dodge city once did to the western states of america--it is the meeting-place of vessels from every land over every water, just as dodge city was the meeting-place of the great trails across the prairies. when a cowboy reached dodge city after six months of constant riding by day and of sleeping under the stars by night, and with wild steers for company, he wanted wickedness in its worst form--such being the perversity of man. and you are told that port said offers to travellers and crew the same attractive features after a month or weeks of rough voyaging that dodge city once offered to the trailsmen. in _the light that failed_ we are told that port said is the wickedest place on earth, that it is a sink of iniquity and a hole of vice, and a wild night in port said is described there with pitiless detail. almost every young man who leaves home for the east is instructed by his friends to reproduce that night, or never return to civilization. and every sea-captain or traveller or ex-member of the army of occupation in egypt that i met on this visit to the east either smiled darkly when he spoke of port said or raised his eyes in horror. they all agreed on two things--that it was the home of the most beautiful woman on earth, which is saying a good deal, and that it was the wickedest, wildest, and most vicious place that man had created and god forgotten. one would naturally buy pocket-knives at sheffield, and ginger ale in belfast, and would not lay in a stock of cigars if going to havana; and so when guides in continental cities and in the east have invited me to see and to buy strange things which caused me to doubt the morals of those who had gone before, i have always put them off, because i knew that some day i should visit port said. i did not want second-best and imitation wickedness, but the most awful wickedness of the entire world sounded as though it might prove most amusing. i expected a place blazing with lights, and with gambling-houses and _cafés chantants_ open to the air, and sailors fighting with bare knives, and guides who cheated and robbed you, or led you to dives where you could be drugged and robbed by others. [illustration: steam-dredge at work in the suez canal] so i went on shore and gathered the guides together, and told them for the time being to sink their rivalry and to join with loyal local pride in showing me the worst port said could do. they consulted for some time, and then said that they were sorry, but the only gambling-house in the place closed at twelve, and so did the only _café chantant_; and as it was now nearly half-past twelve, every one was properly in bed. i expressed myself fully, and they were hurt, and said that egypt was a great country, and that after i had seen cairo i would say so. so i told them i had not meant to offend their pride of country, and that i was going to cairo in order to see things almost as old as wickedness, and much more worth while, and that all i asked of port said was that it should live up to its name. i told them to hire a house, and wake the people in port said up, and show me the very worst, lowest, wickedest, and most vicious sights of which their city boasted; that i would give them four hours in which to do it, and what money they needed. i should like to print what, after long consultation, the five guides of port said--which is a place a half-mile across, and with which they were naturally acquainted--offered me as the acme of riotous dissipation. i do not do so, not because it would bring the blush to the cheek of the reader, but to the inhabitants of port said, who have enjoyed a notoriety they do not deserve, and who are like those desperadoes in the west who would rather be considered "bad" than the nonentities that they are. i bought photographs, a box of cigarettes, and a cup of black coffee at port said. that cannot be considered a night of wild dissipation. port said may have been a sink of iniquity when mr. kipling was last there, but when i visited it it was a coaling station. i would hate to be called a coaling station if i were port said, even by me. when i awoke after my night of riot at port said the _sutlej_ was steaming slowly down the suez canal, and its waters rippled against its sandy banks and sent up strange odors of fish and mud. on either side stretched long levels of yellow sand dotted with bunches of dark green grass, like tufts on a quilt, over which stalked an occasional camel, bending and rocking, and scorning the rival ship at its side. you have heard so much of the suez canal as an engineering feat that you rather expect, in your ignorance, to find the banks upheld by walls of masonry, and to pass through intricate locks from one level to another, or at least to see a well-beaten towpath at its side. but with the exception of dikes here and there, you pass between slipping sandy banks, which show less of the hand of man than does a mill-dam at home, and you begin to think that ferdinand de lesseps drew his walking-stick through the sand from the red sea to the mediterranean, and twenty thousand negroes followed him and dug a ditch. on either side of this ditch you see reproduced in real life the big colored prints which hung on the walls of the sunday-school. there are the buffaloes drawing the ploughs of wood, and the wells of raw sun-baked clay, and the ditches and water-works of two cog-wheels and clay pots for irrigating the land, and the strings of camels, and the veiled women carrying earthen jars on the left shoulder. and beyond these stretches the yellow sand, not white and heavy, like our own, but dun-colored and fine, like dust, and over it amethyst skies bare of clouds, and tall palms. and then the boat stops again at ismaïlia to let you off for cairo, and the brave captains returning from leave, and the braver young women who are going out to work in hospitals, and the young wives with babies whom their fathers have not seen, and the commissioners returning to rule and bully a native prince, pass on to india, and you are assaulted by donkey-boys who want you to ride "mark twain," or "lady dunlo," or "two-pair-of-black-eyes-oh-what-a-surprise-grand-ole-man." a jerky, rumbling train carries you from ismaïlia past tel-el-kebir station, where the british army surprised the enemy by a night march and took a train back to cairo in three hours. and then, after a five hours' ride, you stop at cairo, and this chapter ends. iv cairo as a show-place as a rule, when you visit the capital of a country for the first time it is sufficient that you should have studied the history of that particular country in order that you may properly appreciate the monuments and the show-places of its chief cities; it is not necessary that you should be an authority on the history of norway and sweden to understand paris or new york. for a full appreciation of most of the great cities of the world one finds a single red-bound volume of baedeker to be all-sufficient; but when you go to cairo, in order that you may understand all that lies spread out for your pleasure, you should first have mastered the old and the new testament, a complete history of the world, several of shakespeare's plays, and the files of the london _times_ for the past ten years. almost every man who was great, not only in the annals of his own country, but in the history of the world, has left his mark on this oldest country of egypt, as tourists to the colosseum have scratched their initials on its stones, and so hope for immortality. you are shown in cairo the monuments of great monarchs and of a great people, who were not known beyond the limits of their own country in contemporaneous history only because there was no contemporaneous history, and of those who came thousands of years later. the isle of rodda, between the two banks of the nile at cairo, marks where moses was found in the bulrushes; a church covers the stones upon which mary and joseph rested; in the city of alexandria is the spot where alexander the great scratched his name upon the sands of egypt; the mouldering walls of old cairo are the souvenirs of cæsar, as are the monuments upon which the egyptians carved his name with "autocrator" after it. at actium and alexandria you think of antony and of the two women, so widely opposed and so differently beautiful, whom sarah bernhardt and julia neilson re-embody to-day in paris and in london, and to whom shakespeare and kingsley have paid tribute. mansoorah marks the capture of saint-louis of france, and the crescent and star which is floating over cairo at this minute speak of osman sultan selim i., with whom began the dependence of egypt as a part of the ottoman empire. from there you see the windmills and bake-ovens of napoleon, which latter, stretching for miles across the desert, mark the march of his army. abukir speaks of nelson and the battle of the nile; and after him come the less momentous names tel-el-kebir and "england's only general," wolseley, and the fall of khartoom and the loss of gordon. the history of egypt is the history of the old world. moses, rameses ii., darius, alexander, cæsar, napoleon, mehemet ali, and nelson--these are all good names; and yet what they failed to do is apparently being done to-day by an army of occupation without force, but with the show of it only: not by a single great military hero, but by a lot of men in tweed suits who during business hours irrigate land and add up columns of irritating figures, and in their leisure moments solemnly play golf at the very base of the pyramids. the best of cairo lies, of course, in that which is old, and not in what has been imported from the new world, and its most amusing features are the incongruities which these importations make possible. i am speaking of cairo now from a tourist's point of view, and not from that of a political economist. he would probably be interested in the improved sanitation and the mixed tribunal. [illustration: bazar of a worker in brass] i had pictured cairo as an oriental city of much color, with beautiful minarets piercing the sky-line, and with much richness of decoration on the outside of its palaces and mosques. cairo is divided into two parts, that which is old and decaying and that which is european and modern; the prevailing colors of both are gray, a dull yellow, and white. the mosques are of gray stone, the houses of dirty white, and in the new part the palaces and residences remind one of white italian villas. these are surrounded by tropical gardens, which alone save the city from one monotonous variation of sombre colors. it is not, therefore, the buildings, either new or old, which make cairo one of the most picturesque and incongruous and entertaining of cities in the whole world; it is the people who live in it and who move about in it, and who are so constantly in the streets that from the citadel above the city its roar comes to you like the roar of london. in that city it is the voice of traffic and steam and manufactures, but in cairo it emanates from the people themselves, who talk and pray and shout and live their lives out-of-doors. these people are the natives, the european residents, the army of occupation, and, during the winter months, the tourists. when you say natives you include egyptians, arabians, copts, syrians, negroes from the upper nile, and about a hundred other subdivisions, which embrace every known nationality of the east. mixed with these are the residents, chiefly greek and french and turks, and the army of occupation, who, when they are not in beautiful uniforms, are in effective riding-clothes, and their wives and sisters in men's shirts and straw hats or karkee riding-habits. the tourists, for their part, wear detective cameras and ready-made ties if they are americans, and white helmets and pugarees floating over their necks and white umbrellas if they are english. this latter tropical outfit is spoiled somewhat by the fact that they are forced to wear overcoats the greater part of the time; but as they always take the overcoats off when they are being photographed at the base of the pyramids, their envious friends at home imagine they are in a warm climate. the longer you remain in cairo the more satisfying it becomes, as you find how uninterruptedly the old, old life of the people is going on about you, and as you discover for yourself bazars and mosques and tiny workshops and open cafés of which the guide-books say nothing, and to which there are no guides. you can see all the show-places in cairo of which you have read in a week, and yet at the end of the week you feel as though what you had seen was not really the city, but just the goods in the shop-window. so keep away from show-places. lose yourself in the streets, or sit idly on the terrace of your hotel and watch the show move by, feeling that the best of it, after all, lies in the fact that nothing you see is done for show; that it is all natural to the people or the place; that if they make pictures of themselves, they do so unconsciously; and that no one is posing except the tourist in his pith helmet. the bazars in cairo cover much ground, and run in cliques according to the nature of the goods they expose for sale. from a narrow avenue of red and yellow leather shoes you come to another lane of rugs and curtains and cloth, and through this to an alley of brass--brass lamps and brass pots and brass table-tops--and so on into groups of bookbinders, and of armorers, and sellers of perfumes. these lanes are unpaved, and only wide enough at places for two men to push past at one time; at the widest an open carriage can just make its way slowly, and only at the risk of the driver's falling off his box in a paroxysm of rage. the houses and shops that overhang these filthy streets are as primitive and old as the mud in which you tramp, but they are fantastically and unceasingly beautiful. on the level of the street is the bazar--a little box with a show-case at one side, and at the back an oven, or a forge, or a loom, according to the nature of the thing which is being made before your eyes. goldsmiths beat and blow on the raw metal as you stand at their elbow; bakers knead their bread; laundrymen squirt water over the soiled linen; armorers hammer on a spear-head, which is afterwards to be dug up and sold as an assegai from the soudan; and the bookbinders to the khedive paste and tool the leather boxes for his highness with the dust from the street covering them and their work, with two dogs fighting for garbage at their feet, and the uproar of thousands of people ringing in their ears. the oriental cannot express himself in the street without shouting. everybody shouts--donkey-boys and drivers, venders of a hundred trifles, police and storekeepers, auctioneers and beggars. they do not shout occasionally, but continually. they have to shout, or they will either trample on some one or some one will as certainly trample on them. camels and donkeys and open carriages and mounted police move through the torrent of pedestrians as though they were figures of the imagination, and had no feelings or feet. on the second story over each bazar is the home of its owner. the windows of this story are latticed, and bulge forward so that the women of the harem may look down without being themselves seen. above these are square, heavy balconies of carved open wood-work, very old and very beautiful. scattered through the labyrinth of the bazars are the mosques, with wide, dirty steps covered with the red and yellow shoes of the worshippers within, and with high minarets, and façades carved in relief with sentences from the koran, or with the name of the sultan to whom the temple is dedicated. [illustration: group of natives in front of shepheard's hotel] the bazars are very much as one imagines they should be, the fact that impresses you most about them being, i think, that such beautiful things should come from such queer little holes of dirt and poverty, and that you should stand ankle-deep in mud while you are handling turquoises and gold filigree-work as delicate as that of regent street or broadway. at the bazars to which the dragomen take tourists you will be invited to sit down on a cushion and to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, but you will pay, if you purchase anything, about a pound for each cup of coffee you take. the best bazars for bargains are those in old cairo, to which you should go alone. in either place it is the rule to offer one-third of what you are asked--as i found it was not the rule to do in tangier--and it is not always safe to offer a third unless you want the article very much, as you will certainly get it at that price. you feel much more at home in the bazars and the cafés and in all of the out-of-door life of cairo than in that of tangier, owing to the good-nature of the egyptian. the moor resents your presence, and though that in itself is attractive, the absolute courtesy of the egyptian, when it is not, as it seldom is, servility, has also its advantage. if you raised your stick to a moorish donkey-boy, for instance, you would undoubtedly have as much rough-and-tumble fighting as you could attend to at one time; but you have to beat an egyptian donkey-boy, or strike at him, or a dozen of him, if you want peace, and every time you hit him he comes up smiling, and with renewed assurances that the flying dutchman is a very good donkey, and that all the other donkeys are "velly sick." there is nothing so inspiring as the sight of a carefully bred american girl, who would feel remorse if she scolded her maid, beating eight or nine donkey-boys with her umbrella, until she breaks it, and so rides off breathless but triumphant. this shows that necessity knows no laws of social behavior. when you are weary of fighting your way through the noise and movement of the bazars, you can find equal entertainment on the terrace of your hotel. there are several hotels in cairo. there is one to which you should certainly go if you like to see your name encompassed by those of countesses and princes, and of americans who spell smith with a "y" and put a hyphen between their second and third names. there are, as i say, a great many hotels in cairo, but shepheard's is so historical, and its terrace has been made the scene of so many novels, that all sorts of amusing people go there, from sultans to the last man who broke the bank at monte carlo, and its terrace is like a private box at a mask ball. about the best way to see cairo is in a wicker chair here under waving palms, something to smoke, and with a warm sun on your back, and the whole world passing by in front of you. broadway, i have no doubt, is an interesting thoroughfare to those who do not know it. i should judge from the view one has of the soles of numerous boots planted against the windows of hotels along its course that broadway to the visiting stranger is an infinite source of entertainment. but there are no camels on broadway, and there are no sais. a camel by itself is one of the most interesting animals that has ever been created, but when it blocks the way of a dog-cart, and a smart english groom endeavors to drive around it, the incongruity of the situation appeals to you as nothing on broadway can ever do. mr. laurence hutton, who was in cairo before i reached it, has pointed out that the camel is the real aristocrat of egypt. the camel belongs to one of the very first families; he was there when mena ruled, and he is there now. it does not matter to him whether it is a pharaoh or a mameluke or a napoleon or a mixed tribunal that is in power, his gods are unchanged, and he and the palm-tree have preserved their ancient individuality through centuries. he shows that he knows this in the proud way in which he holds his head, and in his disdainful manner of waving and unwinding his neck, and in the rudeness with which he impedes traffic and selfishly considers his own comfort. these are the signs of ancient lineage all the world over. he is not the shaggy, moth-eaten object we see in the circus tent at home. he is nicely shaven, like a french poodle, and covered with fine trappings, and he bends and struts with the dignity of a peacock. he possesses also that uncertainty of conduct that is the privilege of a royal mind; fellahin and arabs pretend they are his masters, and lead him about with a rope, but that never disturbs him nor breaks his spirit. when he wants to lie down he lies down, whether he is in the desert or in the ezbekiyeh road; and when he decides to get up he leaves you in doubt for some feverish seconds as to which part of him will get up first. to properly appreciate the camel you should ride him and experience his getting up and his sitting down. he never does either of these things the same way twice. sometimes he breaks one leg in two or three places where it had never broken before, and sinks or rises in a northeasterly direction, and then suddenly changes his course and lurches up from the rear, and you grasp his neck wildly, only to find that he is sinking rapidly to one side, and rising, with a jump equal to that of a horse taking a fence, in the front. he can disjoint himself in more different places, than explorers have found sources for the river nile, and there is no keener pleasure than that which he affords you in watching the countenance of a friend who is being elevated on his back for the first time. he and the palm-tree can make any landscape striking, and he and the sais are the most picturesque features of cairo. the sais is a runner who keeps in front of a carriage and warns common people out of the way, and who beats them with a stick if they do not hurry up about it. he is a relic of the days when the traffic in all of the streets was so congested that he was an absolute necessity; now he makes it possible for a carriage to move forward at a trot, which without his aid it could not do. it is obvious that to do this he must run swiftly. most men when they run bend their bodies forward and keep their mouths closed in order to save their wind. the sais runs with his shoulders thrown back and trumpeting like an enraged elephant. he holds his long wand at his side like a musket, and not trailing in his hand like a walking-stick, and he wears a soft shirt of white stuff, and a sleeveless coat buried in gold lace. his breeches are white, and as voluminous as a woman's skirts; they fall to a few inches above his knee; the rest of his brown leg is bare, and rigid with muscle. on his head he has a fez with a long black tassel, and a magnificent silk scarf of many colors is bound tightly around his waist. he is a perfect ideal of color and movement, and as he runs he bellows like a bull, or roars as you have heard a lion roar at feeding-time in a menagerie. it is not a human cry at all, and you never hear it, even to the last day of your stay in cairo, without a start, as though it were a cry of "help!" at night, or the quick-clanging bell of a fire-engine. there is nothing else in cairo which is so satisfying. there are sometimes two sais running abreast, dressed exactly alike, and with the upper part of their bodies as rigid as the wand pressed against their side, and with the ends of their scarf and the long tassel streaming out behind. as they yell and bellow, donkeys and carriages and people scramble out of their way until the carriage they precede has rolled rapidly by. only princesses of the royal harem, and consuls-general, and the heads of the army of occupation and the egyptian army are permitted two sais; other people may have one. they appealed to me as much more autocratic appendages than a troop of lifeguards. the rastaquouère who first introduces them in paris will make his name known in a day, and a lord mayor's show or a box-seat on a four-in-hand will be a modest and middle-class distinction in comparison. [illustration: a british square formed in front of the pyramids] these camels and sais are but two of the things you see from your wicker chair on the marble terrace at shepheard's. the others are hundreds of donkey-boys in blue night-gowns slit open at the throat and showing their bare breasts, and with them as many long-eared donkeys, rendered even more absurd than they are in a state of nature by fantastic clippings of their coats and strings of jangling brass and blue beads around their necks. there are also the women of cairo, the enslaved half of egypt, who have been brought, through generations of training and tradition, to look upon any man save their husband as their enemy, as a thing to be shunned. this has become instinct with them, as it is instinctive with women of northern countries to turn to men for sympathy or support, as being in some ways stronger than themselves. but these women of cairo, who look like an army of nuns, are virtually shut off from mankind, with the exception of one man, as are nuns, and they have not the one great consolation allowed the nun--they have no souls to be saved, nor religion, nor a belief in a future life. there was a young girl married while i was in cairo. the streets around the palace of her father were hung with flags for a week; the garden about his house was enclosed with a tent which was worth in money twenty thousand dollars, and which was as beautiful to the eye as the interior of a mosque; for a week the sheiks who rented the estates of the high contracting parties were fed at their expense; for a week men sang and bands played and the whole neighborhood feasted; and on the last night everybody went to the wedding and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and listened to a young man singing arabian love-songs. i naturally did not see the bride. the women who did see her described her as very beautiful, barely sixteen years old, and covered with pearls and diamonds. she was weeping bitterly; her mother, it appeared, had arranged the match. i did not see her, but i saw the bridegroom. he was fat and stupid, and over sixty, and he had white hair and a white beard. a priest recited the koran before him at the door of the house, and a band played, and the people cheered the khedive three times, and then the crowd parted, and the bridegroom was marched to the door which led to the stairs, at the top of which the girl awaited him. two grinning eunuchs crouched on this dark staircase, with lamps held high above their heads, and closed the door behind him. his sixteen-year-old bride has him to herself now--him and his eunuchs--until he or she dies. we could show similitudes between this wedding and some others in civilized lands, but it is much too serious a matter to be cynical about. the women of egypt are as much slaves as ever were the negroes of our south. they are petted and fattened and given a home, but they must look at life through barriers--barriers across their boxes at the opera, and barriers across the windows of their broughams when they drive abroad, and barriers across their very faces. as long as one-half of the egyptian people are enslaved and held in bondage and classed as animals without souls, so long will an army of occupation ride over the land, and insult by its presence the khedival power. no country in these days can be truly great in which the women have no voice, no influence, and no respect. there are worse things in egypt than bad irrigation, and the harem is the worst of them. if the egyptians want to be free themselves, they should first free their daughters and their mothers. the educated egyptian is ashamed of his national costume; but let him feel shame for some of his national customs. a frock-coat and a harem will not go together. the english, who have done so many fine things for egypt's good, and who keep an army there to emphasize the fact, have arranged that any slave who comes to the office of the consul-general and claims his protection can have it; but these slaves of the married men are not granted even this chance of escape. and so they live like birds in a cage. they eat and dress and undress, and expose their youth and beauty, and hide their age and ugliness, until they die. the cry along the nile a few years ago was, "egypt for the egyptians," and a very good cry it was, although the wrong man first started it. but there was another cry raised in the land of egypt many hundreds of years before of "let my people go," and the woman who can raise that again to-day, and who can set free her sisters of the east, will be doing a greater work than any woman is doing at the present time or has ever done. the women who pass before you in the procession at the foot of the terrace are of two classes only. there is no middle class in egypt. the poor are huddled up in a black bag that hides their bodies from the crown of the head to the feet. what looks like the upper end of a black silk stocking falls over the face from the bridge of the nose and fastens behind the ears, and a brass tube about the size of a spool is tied between the eyes. you see in consequence nothing but their eyes, and as these are perhaps their best feature, they do not all suffer from their enforced disguise. the only women whose bare faces you can see, and from whom you may judge of the beauty of the rest, are the good women of the coptic village, who form a sort of sisterhood, and the dancing-girls, who are not so good. some of these have the straight nose, the narrow eyes, and the perfect figure of cleopatra, as we picture her; but the faces of the majority are formless, with broad, fat noses, full lips, and their figures are without waists or hips, and their ankles are as round as a man's upper arm. when they are pretty they are very pretty, but those that are so are so few and are so covered with gold that one suspects they are very much the exception. of the women of the upper class you see only a glimpse as they are swept by in their broughams, with the sais in front and a eunuch on the box and the curtains half lowered. [illustration: shadow of the pyramid of cheops (from a photograph taken on the top of the pyramid just before sunset)] besides these, much passes that is intended for your especial entertainment. sellers of turquoises, which they dig out from various creases in their robes; venders of stuffed crocodiles and live monkeys; strange men from the desert with a jackal, which they throw, bound by all four legs, and snarling and snapping, on the marble at your feet; little girls who sing songs, and play accompaniments to them on their throats with the tips of their fingers; women conjurers, who draw strings of needles and burning flax from their mouths, and who swallow nasty little wriggling snakes, and hatch pretty fluffy little chickens out of the slabs of the terrace. or else there is a troop of blue and white egyptian soldiers marching by, or gorgeous young officers on polo ponies, or red-coated tommies on donkeys, with their toes trailing in the dust and the ribbons of their scotch caps floating out behind; and consuls-general with gorgeous guards in gold lace, and with wicked-looking curved silver swords; or the young khedive himself, who comes with a great clatter of hoofs and bellowing sais before, and another galloping troop of cavalry in the rear, at the sound of which the people run to the curb and touch the fez, as he raises his hand to his, and rolls by in a cloud of dust. there are very good things to see, and with a companion on one side to explain them, and another on the other side to whom you can impart this information as though you had been born knowing it, you cannot spend a more entertaining afternoon. there is only one drawback, and that is a lurking doubt that you should be up and about seeing the show-places. friday, in consequence, is the best day in cairo, as all the things you ought to see are then closed, and you can sit still on the terrace with a clear conscience. among the mosques and the tombs and the palaces and museums to which all good tourists go, and of which there are excellent descriptions, giving their various dimensions and other particulars, in the guide-books, there are the citadel and the mosque of mehemet ali. the citadel is the fortress built on the hill above the city, but which, with the oriental incompleteness of that time, was reared upon high but not upon the highest ground. the sequel to this naturally was that when mehemet ali wanted the city of cairo he sought out the highest ground, and dropped cannon-balls into the fortress until it capitulated. he afterwards asked all the mamelukes to dinner at the citadel, and then had them treacherously killed--all but one, who rode his horse down the side of the citadel and escaped. if you can imagine the reservoir at forty-second street placed upon the top of madison square garden, and a man riding down the side of it, you can understand what a very difficult and dangerous thing this was to do. there is no doubt that he did it, for i saw a picture of him in the very act in a book of history when i was at school, and i also have seen the marks of his horse's hoofs in the stone parapet of the citadel, and they are just as fresh as they were three years ago, when they were on the other side. the mosque of mehemet ali surmounts the citadel, and its twin minarets are the distinguishing mark of cairo; they are as conspicuous for miles above the city as is the dome of st. paul's over london, and they are as light and graceful as it is impressive and heavy. the men on guard tie big yellow shoes on your feet before they allow you to enter this mosque, the outer court-yard of which is floored with alabaster, over which you slide as though you were on a mirror or a sheet of ice. it is very beautiful, and one is as unwilling to walk on it as to tramp in muddy boots over a satin train. the floor of the mosque is covered with the most magnificent rugs, as wide-spreading as a sheet and as heavy as so much gold; alabaster pillars reach to the top of the square, empty building, and from these rise five domes, colored blue and red, and lightened with gilded letters. it is very rich-looking, gloomy, silent, and impressive. it is the best of the mosques. from the outside, on the ramparts, you can see cairo stretching out below for miles in a level gray jumble of flat roofs and rounded domes and slender minarets, with the high walls of a palace here and the thick green of a park there to break the monotony; beyond it lies the nile, a twisting ribbon of silver; and beyond that rich green fields and canals and bunches of palm-trees; and seven miles away, where the green ceases and the desert begins, are three monuments of gray stone, looking, at that distance, disappointingly small and familiarly commonplace. it is not, i think, until you have seen them several times, and have climbed to their top and gazed up at them from below, that you appreciate the pyramids as you had expected to appreciate them; but after they have laid their charm upon you, you will find yourself twisting your neck to take another look, or going out of your way to see them again before the sun has said good-night to them, as it has done ever since it first climbed over the edge of the world and found them waiting there. there is a mosque on the outside of the city which people visit on certain days to see the howling dervishes go through their peculiar form of worship. this mosque consists of four square walls with a dome. it is whitewashed within, and bare and rude and old. the sunlight enters it through square holes cut in the dome, and beats upon thirty or forty men who stand in a semicircle facing the east. they are of all sorts, from arabs of the desert with long hair and wild eyes, to fat, pleased-looking merchants from the bazars, and the beggars and water-carriers of the streets. around them on chairs are the tourists and the residents, like the spectators at a play rather than the guests of a religious sect watching a religious ceremony. most of the men wear their hats, and some of the women take careful notes and make sketches. they reminded me of medical students at a clinic when a man is being cut up. an archdeacon from one of our western cities wore his hat, to show, probably, that he disapproved of the whole thing; but as he used to eat with his knife while on board the _fulda_, his conduct in any place was not to be considered. the priest recites something from the koran, and the men repeat it, moving their bodies back and forward as they do so with gradually increasing rapidity. what they may be saying is quite unintelligible, and the chorus they make resembles that of no human sound, but rather the gasping or panting of an animal. it is to the visitor absolutely without any religious significance; all that is impressive about it is its horrible earnestness and its at times repulsive results. as the voice of the priest grows more accentuated the bodies of the men swing farther and lower, until their hair sweeps the floor, and their eyes, when they throw their bodies back, are on a level with those of the spectators. a drum beats in quickening time to the voice of the priest and to the gasps of the dervishes, and a flute playing a weird accompaniment seems to mock at their fierce grunts and breathings. it was one of the most unpleasant exhibitions i ever witnessed, and affected one's nerves to such a degree that several of the women had to leave. the eyes of the men rolled in their sockets, and their lips parted, and through their clinched teeth came fiercer and louder gasps, until the chorus of sound reached you like the quick panting of an engine as it draws out of a station. the sweat ran from them like water from a sponge, and the veins stood out on their faces, showing in congested knots beneath the skin. some of them groaned, and others shrieked and cried out, "allah! allah!" this acted like the strokes of a whip on the others, who rocked more and more violently, and swung themselves almost off their feet. then, as the music grew fainter the motion of the bending bodies grew less vigorous and finally ceased, and the men stood rigid, some apparently unmoved and unconcerned, and others turning and reeling in a fit. while this was going forward, and you felt as though you were assisting at a heathen rite in which self-punishment was being inflicted as a bid for god's indulgence, two interesting things happened. an officer in the english army of occupation turned to his dragoman and cried at the top of his voice, angrily: "do you call this worth ten piasters? well, i don't. now if you've got anything to show me, take me to see it. this isn't worth coming to see. you're a rank impostor." [illustration: a section of the pyramid] the other thing was the act of a native woman, who brought her child to the door and handed it to a priest, who took it in his arms and passed with it in front of the swinging, gasping, crazy semicircle of men. the child was about three years old, and was dying, and the mother had brought it there to be cured by the breath of the dervishes. as it passed before them, the hair of some of the men swept its arm, and it turned its frightened eyes up to those of the priest, who smiled gravely down upon the baby and bore him outstretched in his arms three times in front of the swinging crescent. the faith of the child's mother appealed to some of us more than did the englishman's desire to get his money's worth. the incident is only of interest here as showing perhaps why the army of occupation is not as popular as it might be. this officer was no doubt an excellent soldier--the ribbons on his tunic showed that--and no one would have thought of questioning his ability to handle raw recruits or his knowledge of tactics. but in handling the egyptian tactics do not count for so much as tact. there are several ways of reaching the pyramids, and it is eminently in keeping with the other incongruities of the place and time that the most popular way of visiting them is on a four-in-hand coach, with a guard in a red coat and a bell-shaped white beaver tooting on his horn, and a young gentleman with a boutonnière and an unhappy smile holding the reins and working his way in and out between long strings of camels. there is a very smart hotel about two hundred yards from the foot of the pyramids, and you take a donkey there or a camel and ride up a sandy road to the base of the pyramid of cheops. there are then several things that you may do. you can either climb to the top of this first pyramid, or crawl into its interior, or walk over to see the sphinx, or make a tour of subterranean tombs and passageways of alabaster and polished stones, which are lighted for you by magnesium wire or stumps of candles. it seems absurd to say that the sphinx is disappointing, but so many who have seen it say so that i feel i am one of many, and not individually lacking in reverence or imagination. in the first place, the approach to it is bad; you come at the sphinx not from the front, but from the rear, where all you can see of it is a round ball of crumbling stone spreading out from a neck of broken outline, much smaller and meaner than you had imagined it would be. in the second place, instead of looking up at it, or having it look down at you, you view it first from a semicircular ridge of sand, at the bottom of which it reposes, and at such a near view that whatever outline or character of countenance it once possessed is lost. i have seen photographs of the sphinx, taken while i was in cairo, much more impressive than the sphinx itself. lying in a hollow of the sand hills as it does, the farther you move away from it in order to get a better focus, the less you see of it, and as you draw nearer to it it loses its meaning, as does the scenery of a theatre when you are on the wrong side of the foot-lights. i know that that is an unpopular thing to say, and that there are many who feel thrills when they first look upon the face of the sphinx, and who describe their emotions to you at length, and who write down their impressions in their diaries when they get back to the hotel. but they have come a long way expecting to be thrilled, and they do not intend to be disappointed. some of the sphinxes in the museum of gizeh, which you pass on your way to the pyramids, impressed me more than did the one great sphinx, though they were indoors and surrounded by attendants and the cheap decoration of the museum, once a palace for the harem. they were of green stone and of huge proportions, and with "the curling lip and sneer of cold command"; and if you look at them long enough you feel uncomfortable shivers down your back, and a perfectly irrational impulse to rush at them and beat them in the face and force them to tell you what they know and what they have kept back and have been keeping back for centuries and centuries. their faces show that they know all that we know and much besides that we shall never know, and when the world at last comes to an end they will stretch themselves and smile at one another and say: "now _they_ know it, but we knew it all the while. we could have told had we liked, but we have enjoyed watching them fretting and fuming and prying about and tinkering at our faces with their little hammers, and blowing us up with saltpetre only to try and put us back again with steam. we who have kept our secret from herodotus and cæsar, are we likely to give it up to ebers and mark twain?" but this same sphinx by moonlight impressed me more than did anything i saw in the east. not as one sees it by day, with tourists and photographers and donkey-boys making it cheap and familiar, but at night, when the tourists had gone to bed, and the donkey-boys had been paid to keep out of sight, and the moonlight threw the great negro face and the pyramids back of it into shadows of black and lines of silver, and the yellow desert stretched away on either side so empty and silent that i thought i was alone and back two thousand years in the past, discovering the great monuments for myself, and for the first time. before you ascend the pyramid of cheops you must deal with a middle-man in the person of the sheik of the pyramids, who selects guides for you, and who acts as though the pyramids were his private show, and he was both sole proprietor and ticket-taker at the door. he lives in a village near by, and he and his forefathers have always been allowed a monopoly of the pyramids, and distribute their patronage to those guides who will pay them the highest percentage of what they receive from the visitors. you have three men to help you, two to pull, and one to push and to dilate on the view. it takes over ten minutes to climb to the top, with the men jerking at your wrists, and the third man shoving you from below. it is not a difficult feat, and women accomplish it every day, but it leaves you in a breathless state when you reach the summit, and you are stiff above the knees for a day or two after you have come down. when you have reached the summit the guides cheer feebly to give you the idea that you have accomplished something which has often been attempted before, but never so successfully; but you are not deceived, and you do not feel like cheering yourself. the view is worth the climb, however, and the sight of the shadow of the pyramid, spreading out over the villages and canals below like a black cloud, impresses you more with its immensity than the fact that it is a hundred feet higher than the top of the diana on the madison square garden tower. i am sure of this fact, because the man who built the madison square garden assured me of it between breaths on the summit of the pyramid. while you are resting, the thing to do is to pay one of the guides to attempt to run down the pyramid you are on, cross the heavy sand to the pyramid beyond, and reach its top in eight minutes. when you give the word he disappears with a bound and drops into space, skipping and jumping and growing smaller and smaller as he goes, until he looks like a fluttering handkerchief; and when he reaches the sand he is as small as a child of three, and his ascent of the other pyramid suggests a white pigeon shuffling up the steep roof of a barn. it is distinctly on his part a sporting thing to do. the descent of the pyramid is very much worse than going up, and you need to go very slowly, and not to look too often at the people crawling about like ants below. only four men, however, in six years have slipped and fallen during this descent, and one of them had been drinking. they were all killed. the more you see of the pyramids the more you want to see of them, although i think one ascent is all perhaps you will care about taking; but their dignity and the wonder of their being where they are, and for so long, increases with every look at them. you cannot grow too familiar with the pyramids. they will not have it. [illustration: dahabeeyahs on the nile before cairo] on the road back from the pyramids of gizeh there are other pyramids within sight of cairo, but these are those with which the sphinx is associated. you will see here one of the most beautiful sights of cairo, the dahabeeyahs on the nile. they and their white sails, especially when they come wing and wing before the wind, are the most beautiful of floating objects, and when there are hundreds of them coming towards you in lessening perspective, with the sun shining on the sails, and the banks on either side alive and moving with the palms, the river nile becomes the best part of cairo. there is another place on the nile which you should visit, and to which tourists seldom go. this is the isle of rodda, on the bank of which moses was found, and where you may see the nilometer. this is a well about sixteen feet in diameter, connected by a channel with the nile. it is made of masonry, and down one side there runs a column on which are inscribed ancient arabian and cufic numerals, or what answer for numerals. it was dug many centuries ago, and it marks the rising and falling of the river, and at the same time the prosperity or dismay of egypt. when the tide begins to rise, this rude instrument is watched hourly, and the hopes of the people rise and fall as the muddy water moves up or down the narrow well. when it reaches a certain height the sheik in charge declares that the time has come for cutting the banks and irrigating the land. in ancient days the rate of taxation was determined by the height of the inundation, and it is said that the sheik in charge of the nilometer is still under the influence of the government, to whose advantage it is to make the fellahin believe that the inundation is favorable. it was the engineers under napoleon who discovered that the nilometer was being tampered with, but there is no likelihood of its being abused to-day under the english, whose improvement of the irrigation of egypt has been their best work, and for the fellahin's best good. but it is interesting, nevertheless, to look down into the old well, overgrown with vines and surrounded by ruin and crumbling walls and broken lattices, and to think that for centuries it brought news of famine or of plenty, and that it was, primitive as its construction is, the pulse of egypt. the pulse of egypt to-day is not shown in the mere rising or falling of a body of water. it is less primitive in its construction, and no one knows which way it is going to jump. in the next chapter i shall try to tell something of the men who have their fingers on egypt's pulse, and who are agreed in only one thing--that there are too many fingers for egypt's good. v the englishmen in egypt when the visitor to cairo first grasps the extent of his own ignorance of egypt, and appreciates that if he is to understand its monuments and the signs of past times about him he must study the history of the whole world for forty centuries, he is apt to retreat precipitately. later, as a compromise, he proposes skipping thirty-nine centuries and limiting his researches to the study of the political and social conditions of egypt during the last ten years. and when he begins jauntily on this he finds that all that has gone before, from rameses ii. to mehemet ali, is as simple as the line of popes in comparison with the anomalies and intricacies of government that have arisen within the last decade. yet the very intricacies of the subject give to this study a fascination entirely apart from its rare picturesqueness, and no matter what manner of man he may be, he cannot but find some side of the situation which appeals to him. if his mind be constituted like that of a ready reckoner he can revel in unravelling the intricacies of the caisse and the laws of liquidation; if it is judicial, he can perhaps elucidate the powers of the mixed tribunal; if romantic, he has the career of ismail, the most magnificent of patriots and profligate of monarchs; and if it turns towards adventure and the clash of arms, he can read of the heroic fanaticism of fuzzy wuzzy, the son of the mahdi, of the futile mission of gordon, of stewart's march across the desert, and of the desperate valor of the fight at aboo-klea. but it is the paradoxical nature of egypt's present situation which gives it its chief interest, and lends to it the peculiar fascination of a puzzle, or one of whistler's witticisms. for, while egypt is not free, as is morocco, nor under a protectorate, as is tunis, she is still free and still protected. she is free to coin money, to maintain an army, and to make treaties; and yet she pays six million dollars a year tribute to turkey as a part of the ottoman empire, and her army that she is allowed to maintain is officered by english soldiers, whom she is also allowed to maintain. she may not pay out the money she is allowed to coin without the consent of foreigners; she cannot punish the man who steals this money, be he greek, english, or american, without the approval of these foreigners; and her official language is that of one foreign power, her ostensible protector is another, and her real protector is still another, whose commands are given under the irritating disguise of "advice." [illustration: egyptian infantry in their different uniforms] alfred milner, the late under-secretary for finance in egypt, whose _england in egypt_ is the best book on the subject, though it reads like a novel, has put it in this way: "it is not given to mortal intelligence to understand at one blow the complexities of turkish suzerainty and foreign treaty rights; to realize the various powers of interference and obstruction possessed by consuls and consuls-general, by commissioners of the public debt, and other mixed administrations; to distinguish english officers who are english from english officers who are egyptian, foreign judges of the international courts from foreign judges of the native courts; to follow the writhings of the egyptian government in its struggle to escape from the fine meshes of the capitulations; to appreciate precisely what laws that government can make with the consent of only six powers, and for what laws it requires the consent of no less than fourteen." it seems rather unfair to saddle the responsibility for all of these burdens and for this remarkable condition of affairs, which is unequalled in history, upon the shoulders of one man, but one man is responsible for it directly and indirectly. he is still alive, a hanger on at the court of the sultan of turkey, he who was at one time the most picturesque monarch of the world. ismail pasha became khedive a little before the time of the close of our civil war. egypt had never been more prosperous than then--owing but fifteen million dollars. in 1876, when ismail was deposed and his son tewfik pasha put in his place, he had increased the debt of egypt to four hundred and forty-five million dollars. ismail was a typical oriental ruler; he had the typical oriental ruler's french veneer and education, a combination which has been found to produce most serious results. when an oriental is left alone he is a barbarian, or he used to be; now, after he has been made the talk of paris for nine days, and has been given a state dinner at marlborough house, and a few stars for his coat, and called "cousin," he goes home with no particular disgust for his former eccentricities of mis-government, but with a quiver full of new tastes, desires, and ambitions, and thereafter plays his rôle of monarch with one eye on the grand stands of europe. he wants their good opinion, but he wants to get it in his own way--the old way. he begins to build railroads and hospitals, but he continues, after his past custom, to draw the money for such improvements from licensed gambling-houses or from the sale of opium. he has a french cook, but he retains the kurbash; he puts up telephones, but he does not give up the bowstring. [illustration: riaz pasha, prime-minister of egypt] ismail was the first khedive who discovered that the easiest way to get money is to borrow it. he found that all one has to do is to sign a paper, and you get the money. it was very easy for ismail to borrow money, because the credit of egypt was good and sound in itself, and because foreigners, who even at that time swarmed in egypt, knew that the repudiation of debts, while possible in a powerful or free government, was not to be feared from that country. so there began a reign of extravagance for which history has no parallel. if "money breeds money," it is also true that those who spend money freely are given more chances to do so than any one else. adventurers, charlatans, rascals of every climate and every nationality, swarmed down upon cairo, and fought with one another for a chance to glut themselves at the repast which this reckless profligate spread for all comers. no man probably was ever so basely cheated as was ismail, or on so magnificent a scale. and nothing remains but ruins to show where the money spent on his own personal pleasure was bestowed. that other magnificent reprobate, william m. tweed, left monuments like the court house to commemorate his thefts of public money; but ismail's palaces are falling in pieces, the rain has washed the paint off the boards, the tips of the crescents are broken, and great gardens filled with fountains and mosaic paths are choked with weeds and covered with fallen leaves and the dirt and dust of neglect and decay. you can walk over long marble floors which have sunk by their own weight through the rotten foundations, and see yourself at full length in bleared mirrors surrounded by the gilt borders and blue silken curtains of the second empire. ismail ordered these palaces as men order hats, and threw them away as you toss an empty cartridge from a gun-barrel. and that was all the most of them ever were, empty cartridges, mere shells of wood painted to look like marble, and gilding and mirrors, as tasteless as the buildings at the centennial exposition, and lasting as long. and yet they pleased him, and he ordered more and more, so that wherever his eye might rest it would fall upon a palace which would serve as a fitting covering for his royal person, and as a testimony to his magnificence. he wanted many, and he wanted them at once. he had them built at night by the light of candles. the palace of gizeh, which is now a museum, was reared in this way while cairo slept, and at a cost of twenty-four million dollars. the curtains ordered for its windows cost one thousand dollars each, and when it was found that they did not fit the windows, the entire front of the building was torn down, and a new front with windows to match the curtains was put in its place. he built an opera-house as fine as that of covent garden in six months, and a grotto as dark and cool as the mammoth cave, with stalactites of painted rope and rocks of papier-maché and mud, with its sides lined with aquariums, in which swam strange fish. the wind and the dust play through this grotto to-day; for he no sooner reared a palace in air than he turned from it to some new toy. these are the things you can see. you can hear stories--some of them true, some of them possible--of things that are past, such as his swimming-tanks where a hundred of the slaves of the harem bathed together for his edification; the pie out of which, when it was opened, there stepped a ballet-dancer; and the story of the disappearance of the pasha who grew too rich. this is, unfortunately, a true story, and not one out of the _arabian nights_. this pasha was invited by ismail to see a new dahabeeyah, and never returned. but one of the attendants on the khedive came back some weeks later with his finger bitten off at the joint. he and ismail alone know where the pasha who was too rich has gone. these extravagances and these eccentricities were all in keeping with our idea of what an oriental despot should be, but it would be most unfair and ungenerous to give only this side of ismail's character. he was a man of much mind and of large ideas, as well as a man with the tastes of a voluptuary, and the means, for a time, of a count of monte cristo. it was he who built the harbor of alexandria; and the railways and canals that others have completed were started under his régime. all of these things--railroads, palaces, canals, and grottos made of mud--cost money; and there were other expenses. knights of industry and rascals of all degrees extorted vast fortunes from him in indemnities for supposed failures on his part to keep up with his agreements, and to stick to the letter of concessions. some of these, like the payment of fifteen million dollars to the suez canal company, were just enough; but there was also an enormous sum given in backsheesh to turkey to gain the consent of the porte to a proposed change in the line of succession and the establishment of the rule of primogeniture. up to that time the eldest male member of the ruling family had always succeeded to power, but ismail obtained a firman from the sultan allowing his son to follow him. the gratification of this natural vanity or love of family was not obtained for the asking, and cost his people dear. they were already groaning under a multitude of taxes; the army was unpaid; the bureaucracy was rotten throughout; bribery and extortion, unfair taxation, and open seizure of the property of others had reduced the country almost to bankruptcy. ismail in sixteen years had brought about a state of things that threatened utter ruin, to not only the native, but to the strangers within and without the gates. the strangers made the move for reform. i have told this much of ismail not because it is new or unfamiliar, but because it shows how, through his misrule, the foreign element was able to obtain a footing upon the shore of egypt, which footing has now grown to a trampling under foot of what is native and properly egyptian. this entering wedge was called the dual control, and france and england were appointed receivers for egypt, just as we appoint receivers for a badly managed railroad, and ismail was deposed, his son tewfik taking his place. [illustration: an egyptian lancer] but although this was the first important and most official recognition of the right of the stranger to dictate to egypt, he had already obtained peculiar rights in egypt through capitulations, or those privileges granted in the past to foreign residents in turkey and its dependent state of egypt. in the sixteenth century the foreigners who traded in these oriental countries stood in actual need of protection from the natives. because they were foreigners they were regarded with such lack of consideration that, in order to balance the disadvantages of having their shops destroyed and their throats cut, the sultan gave them certain privileges--such as immunity from taxation, immunity from arrest, the inviolability of domicile, and the exemption from the jurisdiction of the local courts. these privileges were unimportant when the foreign element in constantinople was so little and so weak that the position of the chinamen in san francisco in '49 was that of a powerful aristocracy in comparison; but the snake warmed at the hearth-stone grew, and the sultan's empire dwindled, and the privileges which were given to bribe the foreigner to come and to remain became a bane to turkey and a curse to the weaker state of egypt. the inviolability of domicile, for instance, is at this very day made use of by foreigners who are carrying on some wickedness or who have committed a crime for which they cannot be arrested by an egyptian policeman unless he is accompanied by an official representative of the country to which the foreigner belongs. let us suppose, for example, that the police of new york wished to raid a gambling-house. this, i know, is asking a good deal of the reader's intelligence, but we will suppose it to be a gambling-house which has not paid its assessment to the police regularly, and which should be given a lesson. all that the proprietor of the house would have to do, did capitulations extend in new york, would be to lease the house to an italian, or to take out papers of naturalization from the british government. you can imagine the chagrin of an officer of the law who, when he goes to make an arrest, is confronted with a german who says he is an englishman, and whose domicile is accordingly sacred. this, as you can imagine, would impede the wheels of justice. when i was in cairo a greek, who had taken out papers as an american citizen, flaunted this fact in the faces of the native police whenever they came to arrest him for keeping a gambling-house. they applied to our consul-general, mr. e. c. little, of abilene, kansas, who so far differed from the etiquette observed by some other consuls-general in cairo as not to delay and not to warn the criminal. he sent his soldiers to be present at the arrest. the offender met this by bringing forth another american citizen of greek parentage, to whom he claimed to have leased the house, and whose family were inside. mr. little, feeling that the american flag did not look well as a cloak for gambling-houses, and being a young man who has assisted at county-seat fights and who can pitch three curves, said that if the roulette tables were not out of the house in twenty-four hours he would himself break them into kindling-wood with an axe. this incident shows how the capitulations of the sixteenth century are acting as stumbling-blocks to the egyptian of to-day, even when the consuls-general are willing to assist the native government, which is seldom. [illustration: tigrane pasha, minister of foreign affairs] this is not all. the immunity from full taxation, now that the foreigners are among the richest inhabitants of cairo, is most manifestly unjust; and though the mixed courts of an international judiciary have done away with trial of the foreign resident, or lack of trial, in civil cases, by the several consuls-general, the abuses of the capitulations are still a grievous and most unjust imposition by the great powers, ourselves included, upon a weaker one. to return to the dual control and to the story of the growth of the foreigners' hold on egypt. the dual control was unpopular; so was the foreigner and his capitulations, who, waxing fat on the weaknesses of the country after ismail's debauchery of its strength, grew insolent--so insolent that the cry raised by a general in the khedive's army of "egypt for the egyptians" was taken up, and found expression in the arabist movement or rebellion. its leader was arabi pasha. he wanted what the know-nothing party of america wanted--his country for his countrymen. what else he wanted for himself does not matter here. he was, in the eyes of the khedive, a rebel. in the eyes of some of the people he was the would-be preserver of his country against the plague of the foreign invasion. the trouble began at alexandria, where the excited people attacked the foreign residents, killing some, and destroying valuable property. men-of-war of the two powers represented in the dual control had already arrived to put down the rebellion. when the riot on shore was at its height, the english war-vessels bombarded the city. the bombarding of alexandria was war, but it was not magnificent. there are certain things made to be bombarded--forts and ships of war--but cities are not built for that purpose or with that ultimate end in view. the english people, as a people, however, regret the bombardment of alexandria as much as any one. the french war-vessels, for their part, refused to join the bombardment, and so were requested by the english admiral to sail away and give the other half of the dual control a clear field. different people give you different reasons for the departure of the french fleet at this crisis. some say that m. clemenceau, who hated m. freycinet and his policy, possibly raised the cry of the german wolf on the frontier, and pointed out the danger at home if the army and navy were engaged otherwise than in protecting the border. others say that, like the good one of the two robbers in the _babes in the wood_, one of the dual control drew the line at murder or at the bombardment of a country she was supposed to protect. plundering the egyptians was possible, but not bombarding their city. they stopped at that. the english followed up the bombardment of alexandria by the battle of tel-el-kebir, which ended the rebellion. the citadel of cairo surrendered at their approach, and the khedive's rule was again undisturbed. the english remained, however, to "restore order," and to see to the "organization of proper means for the maintenance of the khedive's authority." they have been doing that now for ten years, and it is interesting to note that they have made so little progress that the last "disorder" in cairo was due to the action of the british consul-general himself in allowing the young khedive just twenty-four hours in which to dismiss one of his cabinet. this can hardly be described as "maintaining the authority of the khedive," which the english had promised to do. [illustration: a camel corps patrol at wadi halfa] after the battle of tel-el-kebir great britain stood undoubtedly in the position of the savior of the khedive if not of egypt. her soldiers had crushed the rebellion, and as she had sent her only general and one of the royal family and many thousands of good men to do it, and as she had lost not only men, but money, she thought she deserved something in return. the something she has taken in return has been taken gradually, and is the control of egypt at the present day. it is possible that had the english not lost many more men and much more money in the campaign in the soudan, which followed immediately after the suppression of arabi, they might not have gone so far as they have gone in settling themselves in egypt. but there was a not unnatural feeling that the soudan campaign, which had cost so much, and which was a failure in all but in showing the bravery of the british troops, ought to be paid for, or made up to the english in some way. i should like to go into the story of this most picturesque and heroic of campaigns, but it would require a book by itself. its history is briefly this: the religious and military chieftain known as "the mahdi," shortly after the defeat of arabi, threatened all egypt from the soudan, which rose under his leadership. general hicks, an englishman, with ten thousand men, in the service of the khedive, was sent against him. he was killed, and most of the troops with him. the english, who were at that time the only power in egypt with authority of any sort back of it, and who were virtually in control, felt that they should take the responsibilities of their position as well as its benefits, and avenge the massacre, drive back the mahdi's forces, and, if possible, crush him and them for all time. the campaign was later further complicated by the presence at khartoom of major-general c. g. gordon, who had gone there to lead back in safety the egyptian troops still remaining in the soudan. he was, after his arrival at khartoom, virtually a prisoner at that place, which is a mud city on the banks of the nile far above the fifth cataract. the attempts to rescue him and to suppress the mahdi were equally unsuccessful. this is, in a few words, the story of a campaign which has been unequalled within the last twenty years in picturesqueness, heroism, and dramatic surprises. it had been said that the old days of personal bravery, of hand-to-hand slaughter, and of the attack and defence of man against man, were at an end; that owing to the new weapons of war, by which an enemy can be attacked when several miles distant from the attacking party, when the pressing of an electric button destroys an army corps, and when turning a handle will send three hundred bullets a minute into a mass of infantry, the necessity for personal courage was over. but seldom in history has there been as fierce personal encounters as in the soudan, or as unusual methods of warfare. on the one hand were the naked supporters of the mahdi, armed with their spears and knives, and protected only by bull-hide shields, but actuated by a religious fanaticism that drove them exulting at their enemies, and with no fear of death, but with the belief that through it they would gain joyous and proud immortality. against them were the british troops, outnumbered ten to one, with hundreds of miles of sandy desert before, behind, and on every side of them, cut off from communication with the outside world, in a country barren and unfamiliar, and attacked by tens of thousands, who came when they pleased and where they pleased, rising as swiftly as a sand-storm rises, and disappearing again as suddenly into the desert. when i was in cairo i was told of one of the mahdi's men who continually rushed at a british square during an engagement holding his shield clear of his body as he advanced to throw a spear, and then retreated again. this looked like the worst form of foolhardiness to the english, until they saw that he was protecting with his shield his little boy, who was hiding behind it, and that when the chance offered, this child, who could not have been more than seven, and who was as naked of protection as his father, would throw a spear of his own. the father was wounded four times, but each time the bullet struck him he only shook himself, as a dog shakes off water, and once more rushed forward. when he fell for the last time the boy tumbled across him, unconscious from a wound in his thigh. the surgeons dressed this wound and bandaged it; but when the child came to and saw what they had done, he leaped up and tore the clothes from around him, and then, as the blood from the reopened wound ran out, fell over backwards dead. the english officer who told this story asked if fighting such men could be considered agreeable work from any point of view. [illustration: h. h. abbas ii. khedive of egypt] but the soudan is only of interest here as showing how, having lost so much through it, the british did not feel more inclined than before to evacuate egypt, although there were many who thought, as a few still think, that egypt has cost them too much already, and more than they can ever get back. the loss of gordon was perhaps the disaster of all the most keenly felt. how keenly is shown partly by the statue the english have placed to him in trafalgar square, surrounded by their kings and greatest generals. it shows him with one foot placed on the battlement of khartoom, with his arms folded, and with the head thrown slightly forward, looking out, as he had done for so many weary months, for the relief that came too late. this monument is a reproach to those whose uncertainty of mind and purpose cost gordon his life. it was doing a brave thing to put it up in a public place, being, as it is, a standing reminder of the neglect and half-heartedness that lost a valuable life, and one that had been risked again and again for his country. it is not only a monument to general gordon, but to the english people, who have had the courage to admit in bronze and stone that they were wrong. for the last ten years the english have been as tardy in getting out of egypt as they were in going after gordon into the soudan. they have repeatedly declared their intention of evacuating the country, not only in answer to questions in the house, but in answer to the inquiries of foreign powers. but they are still there. they have not been idle while there, and they have accomplished much good, and have brought benefits innumerable to egypt. they have improved her systems of irrigation, upon which the prosperity of the land depends, have strengthened her army, have done away with the corvee, or tax paid on labor, and with the kurbash, or whip used in punishment, and, what is much the most wonderful, they have brought her out of ruin into such a condition of prosperity that she not only pays the interest on her enormous debt, but has a little left over for internal improvements. there has also been a marked change for the better in the condition of the courts of justice, and there has been an extension of a railroad up the nile as far as sirgeh. but the english to-day not only want credit for having done all this, but they want credit for having done it unselfishly and without hope or thought of reward, and solely for the good of mankind and of egypt in particular. they remind me of those of the g. a. r. who not only want pensions and medals, but to be considered unselfish saviors of their country in her hour of need. there is no reason why a man should not be held in honor for risking his life for his country's sake, and honors, if he wants them, should be heaped upon him, but not money too. he either served his country because he was loyal and brave, or because he wanted money in return for taking certain risks. let him have either the honors or the money, but he should not be so greedy as to want both. england has made a very good thing out of egypt, and she has not yet got all she will get, but she wants the world to forget that and look upon her as an unselfish and enlightened nation that is helping a less prosperous and less powerful people to get upon their feet again. of course it is none of our business (at least it is our policy to say so) when england stalks forth like a roaring lion seeking what she may devour all over the world. americans travel chiefly upon the continent, and unless they go into out-of-the-way corners of the world they have no idea how little there is left of it that has not been seized by the people of great britain. for my own part i find one grows a little tired of getting down and sailing forth and landing again always under the shadow of the british flag. if the united states should begin with hawaii and continue to annex other people's property, we should find that almost all of the best corner lots and post-office sites of the world have been already pre-empted. senator wolcott once said to senator quay: "i understand, quay, you want the chairmanship of the library committee. you seem to want the earth; if you don't look out you will interfere with my plans." if the united states had taken away the little princess's island from her and continued to plunder weaker nations, she would have found that england wants the earth too, and that she is in a fair way of getting it if some one does not stop her very soon. there are a number of good people in england who believe that for the last ten years their countrymen have spent their time and money in redeeming egypt as a form of missionary work, and there are others quite as naïve who put the whole thing in a word by saying, "what would we do with our younger sons if it was not for egypt?" [illustration: the gun mule of the mule battery] three-fourths of the officers in the army of the khedive are english boys, who rank as second lieutenants at home and as majors in egypt. they are paid just twice what they are paid in the english army, and it is the khedive who pays them and not the english. in this way england obtains three things: she is saved the cost of supporting that number of officers; she gets the benefit of their experience in egypt, which is an excellent training-school, at the expense of the egyptians; and she at the same time controls the egyptian army by these same officers, and guards her own interests at egypt's cost. and as if this were not enough, she plants an army of occupation upon the country, and with it menaces the native authority. the irrigation of egypt has of late been carried on by englishmen entirely and paid for by egypt; her railroads are built by the english; her big contracts are given out to english firms and to english manufacturers; and the railroad which will be built to kosseir on the red sea may have been designed in egypt's interest to carry wheat, or it may have been planned to carry troops to the red sea in the event of the seizure of the suez canal or of any other impediment to the shortest route to india. we may not believe that the egyptians are capable of governing themselves, we may believe that it is written that others than themselves shall always rule them and their country, but we must prefer that whoever do this should declare themselves openly, and act as conquerors who come and remain as conquerors, and not as "advisers" and restorers of order. napoleon came to cairo with flags flying and drums beating openly as an enemy; he did not come in the disguise of a missionary or an irrigation expert. and there is always the question whether if left alone the egyptians of the present day could not govern themselves. those of the egyptians i met who were in authority are not men who are likely to return to the debauchery and misrule of ismail. they would be big men in any country; they are cultivated, educated gentlemen, who have served in different courts or on many important diplomatic missions, and whose tastes and ambitions are as creditable and as broad as are those of their english contemporaries. the two most prominent advisers of the khedive at present are his prime-minister, riaz pasha, and his minister of foreign affairs, tigrane pasha. the first of these is a turk, the second an armenian and a christian. it is told of riaz that he was brought to egypt when a boy as a slave. a man who can rise from such a beginning to be prime-minister must have something in him. he showed his spirit and his desire for his country's good in the time of ismail, whose extravagances both he and nubar pasha strenuously opposed, and his aid to the english in establishing egyptian finance on a firmer footing was ready and invaluable. he has held almost every position in the cabinet of egypt, and is not too old a man to learn new methods, and if left alone is experienced and accomplished enough as a statesman to manage for himself. [illustration: lord cromer, the english diplomatic agent in egypt] tigrane pasha struck me as being more of a diplomat than a statesman, but he showed his strength by the fact that he understood the weak points of the egyptians as well as their virtues. it is not the enthusiast who believes that all in his country is perfect who is the best patriot. to say that such a man as this--a man who has a better knowledge of many different governments than half of the english cabinet have of their own, and who wishes the best for his khedive and his country--needs the advice or support of an english resident minister, is as absurd as to say that the french cabinet should govern themselves by the manifestoes of the comte de paris. these men are not barbarians nor despots; they have not gained their place in the world by favor or inheritance. their homes are as rich in treasures of art and history and literature as are the homes of lord rosebery or sir henry drummond wolff, and if they care for their country and the authority of their khedive, it is certainly hard that they may not have the right of serving both undisturbed. the khedive himself has been very generally represented through the english press as a "sulky boy" who does not know what is best for him. it is just as easy to describe him as a plucky boy who wishes to govern his own country and his own people in his own way. and not only is he not allowed to do this, but he is treated with a lack of consideration by his protectors which adds insult to injury, and makes him appear as having less authority than is really his. he might very well say to lord cromer, "it was all very well to dissemble your love, but why did you kick me down-stairs?" sir evelyn baring, now lord cromer, and the ruling figure in egypt, has served his country as faithfully and as successfully as any man in her debt to-day. he has been in egypt from the beginning of these ten years, and he has been given almost unlimited power and authority by his own country, of which his nominal position of consul-general and diplomatic agent is no criterion. he is a typical englishman in appearance, broad-shouldered and big all over, with a smooth-shaven face, and the look of having just come fresh from a bath. in conversation he thinks much more of what he has to say than of how he says it; by that i mean that he is direct, and even abrupt; the egyptians found him most unpleasantly so. but were he more tactful, he would probably have been better liked personally, but would not have succeeded in doing what he has done so well. i do not like what he has done, but i want to be fair in showing that for the work he was sent to do he is probably the best man england could have selected. a man less self-reliant might have feared to compromise himself with home authorities, and would have temporized and lost where lord cromer bullied and browbeat and won. he is a very remarkable man. he studies for a half-hour every day after breakfast, and plays tennis in the afternoon. when he is in his own room, with a pipe in his mouth, he can talk more interestingly and with more exact knowledge of egypt than any man in the world, and your admiration for him is unbounded. in the rooms of the legation, on the contrary, or, again, when advising a minister of the khedive or the khedive himself, he can be as intensely disagreeable in his manner and as powerfully aggressive as a polar-bear. during the last so-called "crisis" he gave the khedive twenty-four hours in which to dismiss his prime-minister. he did this with the assurance from the english foreign office that the home government would support him. he then cabled with one hand to malta for troops and with the other stopped the black watch at aden on their way to india, and called them back to cairo, after which he went out in full sight of the public and banged tennis balls about until sunset. a man who can call out "forty, love!" "forty, fifteen!" in a calm voice two hours after sending an ultimatum to a khedive and disarranging the movements of six thousand of her majesty's troops will get what he wants in the end, and a boy of eighteen is hardly a fair match for him. as i have said, the english press have misrepresented the young khedive in many ways. he is, in the first place, much older both in appearance and manner and thought than his age would suggest, and if he is sulky to englishmen it is not to be wondered at. they could hardly expect his highness to regard them as seriously as his friends as they regard themselves. the khedive gave me a private audience at the abdine palace while i was in cairo, and from what he said then and from what others who are close to him told me of him, i obtained a very different idea of his personality than i had received from the english. [illustration: a gun of the mule battery in action] he struck me as being distinctly obstinate--a characteristic which is so marked in our president that it can only be considered one of the qualifications for success, and is probably the quality in the khedive which the english describe as sulkiness. what i liked in him most was his pride in his army and in the egyptian people as egyptians. it is always well that a ruler should be so enthusiastic over what is his own that he shows it even to the casual stranger, for if he exhibits it to him, how much more will he show it to his people! the khedive has gentle tastes, and is said to find his amusement in his garden and among flowers and on the farm lands of his estates; he speaks several languages very well, and dresses and looks--except for the fez and his attendants--like any other young man of twenty-three or twenty-four in paris or new york. his ministers, who know him best, describe him as having a high spirit, and one that, as he grows older and will be guided by greater experience, will lead him to firmer authority for his own good and for the good of his people. one remark of the khedive's which is of interest to americans was to the effect that the officers in his army who had been trained by stone bey, and those other american officers who entered the egyptian army after the end of our civil war, were, in his opinion, the best-trained men in their particular department in his army. this is the topographical work, and the making of maps and drawings; but those americans who are in charge of egyptian troops on the frontier are also well esteemed. it is the english, however, who have made the fighting part of the army what it is. before they came the troops were unpaid, and badly treated by their officers, but now the infantry and the camel corps and artillery have no trouble in getting recruits. the egyptian is not a natural fighter, as is the soudanese, who fights for love of it, but he has shown lately that when properly officered and trained and well treated, he can defend a position or attack boldly if led boldly. i suggested to the khedive that he should borrow some of our officers, those who have succeeded so well with the negroes of the ninth cavalry and with the indians, for it seemed to me that this would be of benefit to both the officers and the egyptian soldier. it was this suggestion that called forth the khedive's admiration for the americans of his army; but, as a matter of fact, the english would never allow officers of any other nationality than their own to control even a company of the egyptian army. they cannot turn out those foreigners who are already in, but they can dictate as to who shall come hereafter, and they fill all the good billets with their own people; and if there is one thing an englishman apparently holds above all else, it is a "good billet." i know a good many english officers who would rather be stationed where there was a chance of their taking part in what they call a "show," and what we would grandly call a "battle," than dwell at ease on the staff of general wolseley himself; but, on the other hand, if i were to give a list of all the subalterns who have applied to me for "good billets in america," where they seem to think fortunes grow on hedges, half the regimental colors from london to malta would fade with shame. and egypt is full of "good billets." it is true the english have made them good, and they were not worth much before the english restored order; but because you have humanely stopped a runaway coach from going over a precipice, that is no reason why you should take possession of it and fill it both inside and out with your own friends and relations. that is what england has done with the egyptian coach which ismail drove to the brink of bankruptcy. it is true the khedive still sits on the box and holds the reins, but lord cromer sits beside him and holds the whip. vi modern athens perhaps the greatest charm of athens and of the islands and mountains round about it lies in their power to lure back your belief in a great many fine people of whose remarkable deeds you had grown sceptical--of whose existence even you had begun to doubt. it is something very serious when one loses faith in so delightful a young man as theseus, and it is worth while sailing under the lee shores of crete, where he killed the minotaur, if for no other purpose than to have your admiration for him restored. if we could only be as sure of restoring by travel all of those other people of whom our elders ceased telling us when we left the nursery, i would head an expedition to the north pole, not to discover open seas and altitudes and eclipses and such weighty things, but to locate that nice and kindly old gentleman, and his toy store and his reindeer, who used to come at christmas-time, and who has stopped coming since i left school. it is certainly worth while going all the way to greece to see the hill of the nymphs, and the very cave where pan used to sleep in the hot midday, and to thrill over the four crossroads and the high, gloomy pass where the sphinx lay in wait for oedipus with her cruel claws and inscrutable smile. [illustration: greek soldier in the national (albanian) uniform] the story that must always strike every child as most sad and unsatisfactory is the one which tells us how the father of theseus killed himself when his son came sailing back triumphant, and so gallantly engaged in entertaining the beautiful athenian maidens whose lives he had saved that he forgot to hoist the white sails, and caused his father to throw himself off the high rocks in despair. this used to appeal to me as one of the most pathetic incidents in history; but as time wore on my sympathy for the father and indignation against theseus passed away, and i forgot about them both. but when they point out where the black sails were first seen entering the bay, and you stand on the rock from which the people watched for theseus, and from which his father threw himself down, you feel just as sorry, and you rebel just as strongly against that morbid anticlimax, as you did when you first read the story in knickerbockers. it seems almost too sad to be true. they had such a delightful way of mixing up the histories of gods and mortals in those days that the imaginative person who visits athens will find himself gazing as gratefully and as open-eyed at the rocks in which the centaur hid as at those from which demosthenes delivered his philippics, just as in london the room at the charter house where colonel newcome said "adsum" for the last time is much more real than that room in edinburgh in which rizzio was killed, or as the rock from which monte cristo sprang, at the base of the château d'if, is so much more actual than the entire field of waterloo. it is hard to know just which was real and which a delightful myth; and yet there has been so little change in greece since then that you are brought nearer to alcibiades and to pericles than you can ever come, in this world at least, to dr. johnson and dean swift. you cannot recreate grub street and the debtors' prison, but euboea still "looks on marathon, and marathon on the sea," and, if you are presumptuous, you can strut up and down the rocky plateau from which demosthenes spoke, or take your seat in one of the marble chairs of the theatre of dionysus, and pretend you are a worthy citizen of athens listening to a satire of sophocles. [illustration: greek peasant girl] the quiet and fresh cleanliness of modern athens comes to you after the roar and dirt of cairo's narrow lanes and dusty avenues like the touch of damask table linen and silver after the greasy oil-cloth of a mediterranean coasting steamer. it is quiet, sunny, and well-bred. you do not fight your way through legions of donkey-boys and dragomans, nor are your footsteps echoed by swarms of guides and beggars. it is a pretty city, with the look of a water-color. the houses are a light yellow, and the shutters a watery green, and the tile roofs a delicate red, and the sky above a blue seldom shown to ordinary mortals, but reserved for the eyes of painters and poets, who have a sort of second sight, and so are always seeing it and using it for a background. athens is a very new city, with new streets and new public buildings, and a new king and royal palace. it is like a little miniature. there is a little army, chiefly composed of officers, and a miniature cabinet, and a beautiful miniature university, and everybody knows everybody else; and when the king or queen drives forth, the guard turns out and blows a bugle, and so all athens, which is always sitting at the cafés around the square of the palace, nods its head and says, "the queen is going for a drive," or, "her majesty has returned early to-day," and then continues to clank its sword and to twirl its mustache and to sip its coffee. modern athens tends towards the frank in dress and habit of thought. the men have adopted his costume, and the women wear little flat curls like the french ladies in _le figaro_, and peaked bonnets and high heels. [illustration: the university of athens] the national costume of the greeks is taken from the albanians, but it is much more honored in the breach than in the observance. like all national costumes, it is only worn, except for political effect and before a camera, by the lower classes, and also by three regiments of the army. you see it in the streets, but it is not so universally popular as one would suppose from the pictures of athens in the illustrated papers and by the photographs in the shop-windows. it is a most remarkable costume, and as widely different from the flowing robe and short skirt of the early greeks as men in accordion petticoats and heavy white tights and a zouave jacket must evidently be. in the country it still obtains, and it is the farmers and peasants and their wives and the soldiers who supply the picturesque element of dress to the streets of the city. it is an inscrutable problem why, with all the national costumes in the world to choose and pick from, the world should have decided upon the dress of the frank, that is, of the foreigner--ourselves. in spain the peasants have discarded their knickerbockers and short jackets, even in the country, for the long trousers and ill-fitting ready-made clothing of a french "sweater," and the moors cover their robes with overcoats from manchester, and the arabs and chinese and swiss and turks are giving up the picturesque garments that are comfortable and becoming to them, and look exceedingly ugly and uncomfortable in our own modern garb, which is the ugliest and most uncomfortable of national costumes yet devised by men or tailors. if you judge by the uniforms of the army of officers and by the dress of the women of athens, you would think you were in a french city and among french people. it seems a pity that this should be so; that athens, of all cities, should be built of italian villas, inhabited by people who ape the french, and governed by a king from denmark; still, they did not make a success of it when they tried, fifty years ago, to govern themselves. it is perhaps hardly fair to expect the greeks, or even the athenians, to live up to the great rock and the monuments that crown it, and the people of greece are no doubt as fine as those of other little kingdoms or principalities scattered about europe; but then the other kingdoms and principalities have not the history of early greece to call their own nor the acropolis to look up to. [illustration: albanian peasant woman] [illustration: albanian peasant woman] the rock of the acropolis is hardly more a part of modern greece than the rock of gibraltar is a part of spain. geographically it is, but it belongs as much to the visitor as to the native, so little inspiration has he apparently drawn from it, and so little has it served to bring out in him to-day those qualities that made demigods of his ancestors. i think i represent the average intelligence, and yet at this moment i cannot think of any greek within the last hundred years who has gained world-wide renown, either as a sculptor, an artist, a soldier, a writer of comedies and satires, a statesman, nor even as an archæologist; the very historians of greece and the exponents of its secrets and the most distinguished of its excavators are of other countries. they have many heroes of their own; you see their portraits or their photographs in every shop-window; but they are not as familiar to you as the faces and histories of those other greeks who sighed because there were no more worlds, and whose fame has lasted long after the other worlds were discovered. one would think that some young greek, on arising in the morning and seeing the acropolis against the sky, would say to himself, "to-day i shall do something worthy of that." and were he to say that often enough, and try to live up to the fortress and the temple above him, he might help to make greece in this known world what she was in the smaller world of her day of glory. it is not because the world has grown and given her more with which to compete that she has fallen into lesser and lesser significance; for though the world has increased in latitude and longitude, it has not yet carved another hermes like that of praxiteles; and though it has added three continents since his day, it has never equalled in marbles the fluttering draperies of the flying victory, nor the carvings over the doorway of the erechtheum. [illustration: greek peasant] [illustration: albanian peasant in the streets of athens] but, as far as in him lies, the greek has endeavored to copy the traditions of his ancestors. he holds olympic games in the ancient arena which king george has had excavated, and if victorious receives a wreath of wild olives from the hands of the king; and he builds the new market where the old market stood, and the new military hospital as near as is possible to the hospital of æsculapius. but he cannot restore to the market-place that very human citizen who cast in his shell against aristides because he was aweary of hearing him called the just; nor can either his games or his hospital bring back the perfect figure and health of the men whose figures and profiles have set the model for all time. he has, however, retained the greek language, which is very creditable to him, as it is a language one learns only after much difficulty, and then forgets at once. he even goes so far as to put up the names of the streets in greek, which strikes the bewildered tourist trying to find his way back to his hotel as a trifle pedantic, and he prints his daily newspaper in this same tongue. this is, perhaps, going a little too far, as it leaves you in some doubt as to whether you have been reading of the panama scandal or a reprint on the battle of marathon. baron sina, a greek banker, has shown the most public-spirited and patriotic generosity, and taste as well, in erecting the buildings of the university at his own expense and giving them to the city. they are reproductions in many ways of different parts of the temples of the acropolis in miniature. the polytechnic is almost an exact copy of the front of the parthenon. there is a picture of it from a photograph given in this article, but it can supply no idea of the beauty of the modern reproduction of this temple. the lines and measurements are the same in degree; and the polytechnic, besides, is colored and gilded as was the original parthenon, and for the first time makes you understand how brilliant reds and beautiful blues and gold and black on marble can be combined with the marble's purity and help rather than cheapen it. it is a lesson in loveliness, and is as wonderful and brilliantly beautiful a building as the marble and gold monument to the prince consort in hyde park is vulgar and atrocious. if this copy in miniature, this working model of the parthenon, moves one as it does, it can be understood how great must be the strength and purity of the parthenon, even in ruins, with its gilt washed to a dull brown and its colors and bass-reliefs stripped from its pediment. i shall certainly not attempt to describe it. [illustration: polytechnic school] there are very few tourists who visit athens in proportion to those who visit far less momentous ruins; thousands go to rome and see the colosseum, to egypt and view the storied walls of the great rude temples along the nile, and as many more make the tour of the english cathedral towns; but in athens it is almost difficult to find a guide. there are not more than a half-dozen, i am sure, in the whole city, and the acropolis is yours if you wish, and you are often as much alone as though you had been the first to climb its sides. i do not mean by this that it is neglected, or that relic-hunters may chip at it or carry away pieces of its handiwork, or broken bits of the turkish shells that have shattered it, but the guards are unobtrusive, and you are free to wander in and out in this forest of marble and fallen trunks of columns as though you were the ghost of some athenian citizen revisiting the scenes of his former life. there is no question that half of the pleasure you receive in wandering over the top of this great wind-blown rock, with the surrounding snow-touched mountains on a level with your eye, and the great temples rearing above you or lying broken at your feet, magnificent even there, is due to your seeing them alone, to the fact that no guide's parrot-like volubility harasses you, no guard's scornful gloom chills your enthusiasm. the great bay of turquoise-blue and the green fields and the bunches of cactus and groves of dark olive-trees below are unspoiled by modern innovations, and the hills are still dotted with sheep and shepherds, as they were in the days of sappho. [illustration: an old athenian of the present day] overhead is the blue sky, with the ivory columns between, far below you is the steep naked rock, or, on the other hand, the two semicircles of marble seats cushioned with velvet moss and carpeted with daisies and violets, and beyond the limits of the yellow town and its red roofs and dark green gardens stretches the green plain until it touches the sea, or is blocked by mount hymettus or mount pentelicus, beyond which latter lies the field of marathon. sitting on the edge of the rock, you can imagine the actors strutting out into the theatre below, and the acquiescent chorus chanting its surprise or horror, and almost see the bent shoulders and heads of the people filling the half-circle and leaning forward to catch each word of the play as it comes to them through the actors' masks. [illustration: a greek shepherd] sounds, no matter how far afield, drift to you drowsily, like the voice of one reading aloud on a summer's day--the bleating of the sheep in the valley where plato argued, and the jangling of a goat's bell, or the laughter of children flying kites on the pnyx, a quarter of a mile away. and beyond the reach of sound is the ægean sea weltering in the sun, with little three-cornered sails, like tops, or a great vessel drawing a chalk-line after it through the still surface of the water. all things are possible at such a time in this place. you can almost hear the bees on mount hymettus, and you would receive the advance of a centaur as calmly as alice noted the approach of the white rabbit. you believe in nymphs and satyrs. they have their homes there in those caves, and in the thick green, almost black, woods at the base of the parnes range, and you love the bravery of st. paul, who dared to doubt such things when he stood on the rock at your feet and told the men of athens that they were in many things too superstitious. it is something to have seen the ribs cut in the rock on the top of the acropolis which kept the wheels of the chariots from slipping when the panathenaic procession moved along the via sacra to the eleusinian mysteries, to have looked upon the caryatides of the erechtheum, and to have wanted back as a lost part of your own self, for the time being, the elgin marbles. when napoleon stole the venus of milo he placed her in the louvre, where every one will see her sooner or later; for if he is good he goes to paris when he dies, and if he is bad he is sure to go there in his lifetime. but _who_ has ever been to the british museum? one would as soon think of visiting pentonville prison. and how do the marbles look under the soot-stained windows or the gray of london fog? like the few lord elgin did not want, and that stand out like ivory in their proper height against the soft sky that knows and loves them? when the people of great britain have returned the elgin marbles to greece, and the rock of gibraltar to spain, and the koh-i-noor diamond to india, and egypt to the egyptians, they will be a proud and haughty people, and will be able to hold their heads as high as any one. one cannot help feeling that the king of greece has a much greater responsibility than he knows. other monarchs must look after their boundaries; he must not only look after his boundaries, but his sky-line. another such affront to good taste as the observatory on the hill of the nymphs, and the sky-line of athens will be unrecognizable. and the tall chimneys at the piræus are not half as attractive to the view as the spars of the ships. it is much better not to have manufactories that must have chimneys than to spoil a view which no other kingdom can equal. any king can put up a chimney; very few are given the care of an acropolis; and if the king and queen of greece wish to be remembered as kindly by the rest of the world as they are loved dearly by their adopted people, they will guard the treasure put in their keeping, and sweep observatories from sacred hills, and continue to limit the guides on the acropolis, and so win the gratitude of a civilized world. vii constantinople a little italian steamer drew cautiously away from the piræus when the waters of the bay were quite black and the quays looked like a row of foot-lights in front of the dark curtain of the night. she grazed the anchor chains of h. m. s. the _colossus_, where that ship of war's broad white deck lay level with the water, as heavy and solid as a stone pier. she seemed to rise like an island of iron from the very bottom of the bay. her sailors, as broad and heavy and clean as the decks, raised their heads from their pipes as we passed under the glare of the man-of-war's electric lights, and a bugle call came faintly from somewhere up in the bow. it sounded as though it were a quarter of a mile away. our lower deck was packed with greeks and albanians and turks, lying as closely together on the hard planks as cartridges in the front of a circassian's overcoat. they were very dirty and very handsome, in rakish little black silk pill-box caps, with red and gold tops, and the initials "h. i." worked in the embroidery; their canvas breeches were as baggy and patched and muddy as those of a football-player, and their sleeveless jackets and double waistcoats of red and gold made them look like a uniformed soldiery that had seen very hard service. priests of the greek church, with long hair and black formless robes, and hats like stovepipes with the brim around the upper end, paraded the narrow confines of the second cabin, and german tourists with red guide-books, and the italian ship's officers with a great many medals and very bad manners, stamped up and down the main-deck and named the shadowy islands that rose from the sea and dropped out of sight again as we steamed past them. in the morning the islands had disappeared altogether, and we were between high banks--higher than, but not so steep as the palisades; rows of little scrubby trees ran along their fronts in lateral lines, and at their base mud forts with mud barracks and thatched roofs pointed little cannon at us from every jutting rock. we were so near that one could have hit the face of the high hills with a stone. these were the dardanelles, the banks that nature has set between the sea of marmora and the mediterranean to protect constantinople from mediterranean squadrons. we pass between these banks for hours, or between the high bank of roumelia on one side and the low hilly country of asia where troy once stood on the other, until, at sunset, we are halted in the narrowest strait of the dardanelles, between the castle of asia and the castle of europe, "the lock of the sea"--that sea of which gibraltar is the key. that night we cross through the sea of marmora, and by sunrise are at constantinople. constantinople is such a long word, and so few of the people you know have visited it in comparison with those who have wintered at cairo or at rome, or who have spent a season at vienna, or taken music-lessons in berlin, that you approach it with a mind prepared for surprises and with the hope of the unexpected. i had expected that the heart of the ottoman empire would be outwardly a brilliant and flashing city of gilded domes and minarets, a cluster of colored house fronts rising from the dancing waters of the bosporus, and with the banks lined with great white palaces among gardens of green trees. there are more gilded domes in new york city and in boston than in constantinople. in new york there are three, and in boston there is the state house, which looks very fine indeed from the new bridge across the charles when the river is blocked with gray ice, and a setting sun is throwing a light on the big yellow globe. but constantinople is all white and gray; the palaces that line the bosporus are of a brilliant white stucco, and the mosques like monster turtles, which give the city its chief distinction, are a dull white. in the turkish quarter the houses are more sombre still, of a peculiar black wood, and built like the old log forts in which our great-great-grandfathers took refuge from the indians--square buildings with an overhanging story from which those inside could fire down upon the enemy below. the jutting balcony on the turkish houses is for the less serious purpose of allowing the harem to look down upon the passers-by. [illustration: general view of constantinople] constantinople is a fair-weather city, and needs the sun and the blue sky and the life of the waters about it, which give to the city its real individuality. it misses in winter the pleasure-yachts of the summer months, the white uniforms of the thousands of boatmen, and the brighter dressing of the awnings and flags of the ships and steamers. but the waters about constantinople are its best part, and are fuller and busier and brighter than either those around the battery or those below the thames embankment, and by standing on its wide wooden bridge, over which more people pass in a day than over any other (save london bridge) in the world, one can see a procession of all the nations of the east. constantinople is a much more primitive city than one would expect the largest of all eastern cities to be. it impresses you as a city without any municipal control whatsoever, and you come upon a building with the stamp of the municipal palace upon it with as much surprise as you would feel in finding an underwriter's office at the north pole. in many ways it is the most primitive city that i have ever been in. in all that pertains to the sultan, to the religion of the people, of which he is the head, and to the army, the recognition due them is rigidly and impressively observed. but in what regards the local life of the people there seems to be absolutely no interest and no responsibility. there is no such absolute power in europe, not excepting that of the czar or of the young emperor, as is that exercised by the sultan; and the mosques of the faithful are guarded and decorated and held more highly in reverence than are many churches of a more civilized people; and the army impresses you as one you would much prefer to lead than one from which you would elect to run away. but the comfort of the inhabitants of constantinople is little considered. there is nothing that one can see of what we call public spirit, unless building a mosque and calling it after yourself, in a city already supplied with the most magnificent of such temples, can be called public-spirited. of course one does not go to constantinople to see electric lights and asphalt pavements, nor to gather statistics on the poor-rate, but it is interesting to find people so nearly in touch with the world in many things, and so far away from it in others. as long as i do not have to live in constantinople, i find its lack of municipal spirit quite as interesting a feature of the city as its mosques. [illustration: one of the sultan's palaces on the bosporus] constantinople, for example, is a city with as large a population as has berlin or vienna, and its fire department is what you see in the illustration accompanying this chapter. they are very handsome men, as you can note for yourself, and very smart-looking, but when they go to a fire they make a bargain with the owner of the building before they attempt to save his property. the great fire-tower in this capital of the ottoman empire is in galata, and from it watchmen survey the city with glasses, and at the first sight of a blazing roof one of them runs down the tower and races through the uneven streets, calling out the fact that a house is burning, and where that house may be. each watchman he meets takes up the cry, and continues calling out that the house is burning, even though the house is three miles away, until it burns down or is built up again, or the watchman is retired for long service and pensioned. besides these amateur firemen there are two real fire companies, but they can do little in a city of 880,000 people. the police who guard constantinople at night are an equally primitive body of men. they carry a heavy club, about five feet long and as thick as a man's wrist, and with this they beat the stones in the streets to assure people that they are attending strictly to their work, and are not sleeping in doorways. the result of this is that no one can get to sleep, and all evil-minded persons can tell exactly where the night-watchman is, and so keep out of his way. the watchman under my window seemed to act on the idea of the gentleman who, on taking his first trip on a sleeping-car, declared that if he couldn't sleep no one else should, and acted accordingly. there is nothing, so far as i can see, in which the oriental delights as much as he does in making a noise. it is most curious to find a whole people without nerves, who cannot talk without shouting, and who cannot shout without giving you the idea that they are in great pain, and that unless relief comes promptly they will die, and that it will be your fault. those of them who sell bread or fruits or fish or beads, or whatever it may be, in the streets, bellow rather than shout, or cry in sharp, agonizing shrieks, high and nasal and fierce. they apparently never "move on." they always meet under your window or at the corners of a street, and there all shout at once, and no one pays the least attention to them. they might be lamp-posts or minarets, for all the notice they receive. i can imagine no fate or torture so awful as to be ill in constantinople and to have to lie helpless and listen to the street cries, to the tin horns of the men who run ahead of the streetcars--which incidentally gives you an idea of the speed of these cars--and to the snarling and barking of the thousands of street dogs. [illustration: a fire company of constantinople] there are three or four intensely interesting ceremonies and many show-places in constantinople which are unlike anything of the same sort in any other city. apart from these and the bazars, which are very wonderful, there is nothing in the city itself which makes even the oriental seek it in preference to his own mountains or plains or native village. constantinople, so far as its population is to be considered, is standing still. it impresses you as stagnant before your statistical friend or the oldest member of the diplomatic corps or the oldest inhabitant tells you that it is so. you can very well imagine the frank's finding a long residence in cairo possible, or in pretty little athens, where the boulevards and the classics are so strangely jumbled, but one cannot understand a man's settling down in constantinople. where there are no women there can be no court, and the few rich greek residents and still fewer of the pashas and the diplomats make the society of the city. even these last find it far from gay, for it so happens that the ambassadors are all either bachelors, widowers, or the husbands of invalid wives, and the result is a society which depends largely on a very smart club for its amusement. in the wintertime, when the snow and rain sweep over the three hills, and the solitary street of galata is a foot deep in slush and mud, and the china stoves radiate a candle-like heat in a room built to let in all the air possible, i can imagine few less desirable places than the capital of the ottoman empire. this is in the winter only; as i have said, it is a fair-weather city, and i did not see it at its best. there are three things to which one is taken in constantinople--the mosque of st. sophia, the treasures of the sultan, and the sultan going to pray in his own private mosque. the sultan's own mosque is situated conveniently near his palace, not more than a few hundred feet distant. once every friday he rides this distance, and once a year journeys as far as the mosque of st. sophia. with these outings he is content, and on no other occasions does he show himself to his people or leave his palace. this is what it is to be a sovereign of many countries in europe, asia, and africa, the head of the mussulman religion; and the ruler of nations and lands conquered by your ancestors, of which you see less than a donkey-boy in cairo or the owner of a caïque on the bosporus. we used to sing in college, "the sultan better pleases me; his life is full of jollity." the jollity of a life which the possessor believes to be threatened by assassination in every form and at any moment is of a somewhat ghastly nature. you obtain tickets for the selamlik, as the ceremony of the sultan's visit to his mosque is called, and you are requested, as you are supposed to be the guest of the sultan on these occasions, not to bring opera-glasses. but it is nevertheless strongly suggestive of a theatrical performance. the mosque is on one side of a wide street; the houses in which the spectators sit, like the audience in a grand-stand, are on the other. one end of the street is blocked by a great square, and the other by the gateway of the palace from which the sultan comes. the street is not more than a hundred yards in length. a band of music enters this square first and plays the overture to the ceremony. the musicians are mounted on horseback and followed by a double line of cavalrymen on white horses, and each carrying a lance at rest with a red pennant. there are thousands of these; they stretch out like telegraph poles on the prairie to an interminable length, their scarlet pennants flapping and rustling in the sharp east wind like a forest of autumn leaves. you begin to suspect that they are going around the square and returning again many times, as the supers do in "ours." then the horses turn black and the overcoats of the men change from gray to blue, and more scarlet pennants stretch like an arch of bunting along the street leading to the palace, until they have all filed into the open square and halt there stirrup to stirrup, a moving mass of four thousand restless horses and four thousand scarlet flags. and then more bands and drums and bugle-calls come from every point of the city, and regiment after regiment swarms up the hill on which the palace rests, the tune of one band of music breaking in on the tune of the next, as do those of the political processions at home, until every approach to the gate of the palace is blocked from curb to curb with armed men, and you look out and down upon the points of five thousand bayonets crushed into a space not one-fifth as large as madison square. there is no populace to see this spectacle, only those of the faithful who stop on their way to mecca to catch this glimpse of the head of their religion, and a few women who have brought petitions to present to him and who are allowed within the lines of soldiers. [illustration: street dogs of constantinople] but pashas and beys and other high dignitaries are arriving every moment in full regalia, for this is like a drawing-room at buckingham palace, or a levee at st. james's, and every one must leave all other matters to attend it. twenty men with twenty carts rush out suddenly from the curtain of zouaves and sailors, and scatter soft gravel on the fifty yards of roadway over which the sultan intends to drive. they remind you of the men in the circus who spread sawdust over the ring after the horses' hoofs have torn it. and then, high above the heads of the nine thousand soldiers and the few thousand more dignitaries, diplomats, and spectators, a priest in a green turban calls aloud from the top of the minaret. it is a very beautiful cry or call, in a strong, sweet tenor voice, inexpressibly weird and sad and impressive. it is answered by a bugle call given slowly and clearly like a man speaking, and at a certain note the entire nine thousand soldiers salute. it is done with a precision and shock so admirable that you would think, except for the volume of the noise, that but one man had moved his piece. the voice of the priest rises again, and is answered by triumphant strains of brass, and the gates of the palace open, and a glittering procession of officers and princes and pashas moves down the broad street, encircling a carriage drawn by two horses and driven by servants in gold. at the sight of this the soldiers cry "long live the sultan" three times. it is like the roar of a salute of cannon, and has all the feeling of a cheer. the sultan sits in the back of the open carriage, a slight, tired-looking man, with a pale face and black beard. he is dressed in a fur overcoat and fez. as he passes, the men of his army--and they _are_ men--salute him, and the veiled women stand on tiptoe behind them and stretch out their petitions, and the pashas and chamberlains and cabinet officers bend their bodies and touch the hand to the heart, lip, and forehead, and drop it again to the knee. the pilgrims to mecca fall prostrate on their faces, and the sultan bows his head and touches his hand to his fez. opposite him sits osman pasha, the hero of the last war, and one of the greatest generals of the world, his shoulders squared, his heart covered with stars, and his keen, observant eyes wandering from the pale face of his sovereign to the browned, hardy-looking countenances of his men. the sultan remains a half-hour in the mosque, and on his return drives himself back to the palace in an open landau. this was the first time i had seen the turkish soldier in bulk, and he impressed me more than did any other soldier i had seen along the shores of the mediterranean. i had seen the british troops repulse an imaginary attack upon the rock of gibraltar, and half of the army of occupation in egypt dislodge an imaginary enemy from the sand hills around cairo, and i had seen french and italian and greek soldiers in lesser proportion and in lesser activity. but to me none of these had the build or the bearing or the ready if rough look of these turks. the french zouaves of algiers came next to them to my mind, and it may be that the similarity of the uniform would explain that; but as i heard the sultan's troops that morning marching up the hills to their outlandish music, and looked into eyes that had never been shaded from the sun, and at the spring and swing of legs that had never worn civilized trousers, i recalled several notable battles of past history, and the more recent lines of mr. rudyard kipling where he pays his compliments to the russian on the frontier: "i'm sorry for mr. bluebeard, i'd be sorry to cause him pain; but a hell of a spree there is sure to be when he comes back again." [illustration: guard of cavalry preceding the sultan to the mosque] the oriental is one of those people who do things by halves. he has a fine army, but the bulk of his navy has not left the golden horn for many years, and it is doubtful if it could leave it; his palace walls are of mosaic and wonderfully painted tiles, and the roofs of rusty tin; his sons are given the questionable but expensive education of paris, and his daughters are not allowed to walk abroad unless guarded by servants, and with the knowledge that every policeman spies upon them, knowing that, could he detect them in an indiscretion, he would be rewarded and gain promotion. consequently it does not surprise you when you find the sultan's treasures heaped together under dirty glass cases, and treated with the indifference a child pays to its last year's toys. the crown-jewels and regalia kept at the tower, itself under iron bars and guarded by beefeaters, are not half as impressive as are the jewels of the sultan, which lie covered with dust under a glass show-case, and guarded by a few gloomy-looking effendis in frock-coats. all the presents from other monarchs and all the gifts of lesser notables who have sought some sultan's favor, all the arms and trophies of generations of wars, are piled together in this treasury with less care than one would give to a rack of pipes. it is a very remarkable exhibition, and it is magnificent in its oriental disregard for wealth through long association with it. bronze busts of emperors, jewelled swords, imperial orders, music-boxes, gun-cases, weapons of gold instead of steel, precious stones, and silver dressing-cases are all heaped together on dusty shelves, without order and classification and without care. you can see here handfuls of uncut precious stones on china plates, or dozens of gold and silver pistols thrown in a corner like kindling-wood. and the most remarkable exhibition of all is the magnificent robes of those sultans who are dead, with the jewels and jewelled swords and belts and insignia worn by them, placed on dummies in a glass case, as though they were a row of stuffed birds or specimens of rock. in the turbans of one of these figures there are pearls as large as a woman's thumb, and emeralds and rubies as large as eggs, and ropes of diamonds. this sounds like a story from the _arabian nights_; but then these are the heroes of the _arabian nights_--the sultans who owned the whole northern coast of africa and asia, and who spent on display and ornament what we put into education and railroads. the present sultan, abd-ul-hammed ii., so far differs from those who have preceded him that he as well as ourselves spends money on education and railroads and all that they imply. as the head of a religion and of an empire he may not cheapen himself by being seen too often by his people, but his interests spread beyond even the great extent of his own boundaries, and his money is given to sufferers as far apart in all but misfortune as the johnstown refugees and the victims of the earthquakes of zante and corfu. and his protection is extended to the american missionaries who enter his country to preach a religion to which he is opposed. while i was in constantinople he showed the variety of his interests in the outside world by making two presents. to the czar of russia he gave a book of photographs of the vessels in his navy, and in contrast to this grimly humorous recognition of russia's ambitions he presented to our government an emblem in gold and diamonds, commemorating in its design and inscription the discovering of this country, worth, intrinsically, many thousands of dollars. he was, i believe, the only sovereign who showed a personal interest in our national celebration, and his gift was properly one of the government's most conspicuous exhibits at the columbian fair. the mosque of st. sophia is one of the first things you are taken to see in constantinople. it is to the mussulman what st. peter's is to the good catholic, although justinian built it, and the cross still shows in many parts of the great building. three times during the year this mosque is illuminated within and without, and every good mussulman attends there to worship. there is something very fine about the religion of mohammed--you do not have to know much about it to appreciate the faith of its followers, whether you know what it is they believe or not. in their outward observance, at least, of the rules laid down for them in the koran, they show a sincerity which teaches a great lesson. you can see them at any hour of the day or in any place going through their devotions. a soldier will kneel down in a band stand, where a moment before he has been playing for the regiment, and say his prayers before two thousand spectators; and i have had some difficulty in getting my trunks on the orient express, because the porters were at another end of a crowded, noisy platform bowing towards the east. once a year they fast for a month, the season of ramazan, and as i was in eastern countries during that month i know that they fast rigidly. ramazan begins in egypt when the new moon appears in a certain well near cairo. two men watch this well, and when they see the reflection of the new moon on its surface they run into cairo with the news, and ramazan begins. there is nothing which so well illustrates the unchangeableness of the east and its customs as the sight of these men running through the streets of cairo, with its dog-carts and electric lights, its calendars and almanacs, to tell that the moon has again reached that point that it had reached for many hundreds of years before, when all the faithful must fast and pray. [illustration: exterior of the mosque of st. sophia] on one of the last days of ramazan i went to the door of st. sophia, and was led up a winding staircase in one of its minarets--a minaret-tower so broad and high that the staircase within it has no steps, but is paved smoothly like a street. it seemed as though we had been climbing nearly ten minutes before we stepped out into a great gallery, and looked down upon thousands of turbaned figures bowing and kneeling and rising again in long rows like infantry in close order. between these worshippers and ourselves were fifty circles of floating tapers swinging from chains, and hanging like a smoky curtain of fire between us and the figures below. the voice of the priest rose in a high, uncanny cry, and the sound of the thousands of men falling forward on their faces and arms was like the rumble of the waves breaking on the shore. outside, the tops of minarets were circled with lights and lamps strung on long ropes, with the ends flying free, and swinging to and fro in the night wind like necklaces of stars. this was the most beautiful of all the sights of constantinople; and as a matter of opinion, and not of fact, i think the best part of constantinople is that part of it that is in the air. * * * * * before ending this last chapter, i should like to make two suggestions to the reader who has not yet visited the mediterranean and who thinks of doing so. let him not be deterred, in the first place, by any idea of the difficulties of the journey, for he can go from gibraltar along the entire northern coast of africa and into greece and italy with as little trouble and with as much comfort as it is possible for him to make the journey from new york to chicago. and in the second place, should he go in the winter or spring, let him not be misled by "italian skies," or "the blue mediterranean," or "the dancing waters of the bosporus," into imagining that he is going to be any warmer on the northern coast of africa than he is in new york. i wore exactly the same clothes in italy that i wore the day i left the north river blocked with ice, and i watched a snow-storm falling on "the dancing waters of the bosporus". there are some warm days, of course, but it is well to follow that good old-fashioned rule in any part of the world, that it is cold in winter and warm in summer, and people who spend their lives in trying to dodge this fact might as well try running away from death and the postal system. to any one who has but a little time and a little money to spend on a holiday, i would suggest going to gibraltar, and from there to spain and morocco. this is the only place, perhaps, in the world where three so widely different people and three such picturesque people as the moor, the british soldier, and the spaniard can be found within two hours of one another. morocco, from political causes, is less civilized than any other part of the northern part of africa; and it can be seen, and with it the southern cities of spain and the rock of gibraltar, in five or six weeks, and at a cost of a very few hundred dollars. this was to me the most interesting part of the mediterranean, chiefly, of course--for it possesses few of the beauties or monuments or historical values of the other shores of that sea--because it was unknown to tourists and guide-books. a visit to the rest of the mediterranean is merely verifying for yourself what you have already learned from others. the end * * * * * transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation remains as in the original. spelling has been made consistent throughout where the author's preference could be ascertained. punctuation has been normalized. page 203: "it all that pertains to the sultan" "it all" has been changed to "in all". transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). the original text includes greek characters that have been replaced with transliterations in this text-file version. the mediterranean [illustration] the mediterranean its storied cities and venerable ruins by t. g. bonney, e. a. r. ball, h. d. traill, grant allen, arthur griffiths and robert brown illustrated with photogravures new york james pott & company 1907 contents page i. the pillars of hercules, 1 portals of the ancient world--bay of tangier at sunrise- tarifa--the rock of gibraltar--wonders of its fortifications--afternoon promenade in the alameda gardens- ascending the rock--view from the highest point--the great siege--ceuta, the principal spanish stronghold on the moorish coast--the rock of many names. ii. algiers, 28 "a pearl set in emeralds"--two distinct towns; one ancient, one modern--the great mosque--a mohammedan religious festival--oriental life in perfection--the road to mustapha supérieur--a true moorish villa described--women praying to a sacred tree--excessive rainfall. iii. malaga, 42 a nearly perfect climate--continuous existence of thirty centuries--granada and the world-renowned alhambra--systems of irrigation--vineyards the chief source of wealth--esparto grass--the famous cape de gatt--the highest peak of the sierra nevada--last view of granada. iv. barcelona, 61 the flower market of the rambla--streets of the old town- the cathedral of barcelona--description of the columbus monument--all saints' day in spain--mont tibidaho--diverse centers of intellectual activity--ancient history- philanthropic and charitable institutions. v. marseilles, 94 its greek founders and early history--superb view from the sea--the cannebière--the prado and chemin de la corniche- château d'if and monte-cristo--influence of the greeks in marseilles--ravages by plague and pestilence--treasures of the palais des arts--the chapel of nôtre dame de la garde- the new marseilles and its future. vi. nice, 124 the queen of the riviera--the port of limpia--castle hill- promenade des anglais--the carnival and battle of flowers- place masséna, the center of business--beauty of the suburbs--the road to monte carlo--the quaintly picturesque town of villefranche--aspects of nice and its environs. vii. the riviera, 145 in the days of the doges--origin of the name--the blue bay of cannes--ste. marguerite and st. honorat--historical associations--the rue l'antibes--the rock of monaco--"nôtre dame de la roulette"--from monte carlo to mentone--san remo--a romantic railway. viii. genoa, 160 early history--old fortifications--the rival of venice- changes of twenty-five years--from the parapet of the corso--the lower town--the genoese palazzi--monument to christopher columbus--the old dogana--memorials in the campo santo--the bay of spezzia--the isola palmeria--harbor scenes. ix. the tuscan coast, 192 shelley's last months at lerici--story of his death--carrara and its marble quarries--pisa--its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings--the cloisters of the campo santo- napoleon's life on elba--origin of the etruscans--the ruins of tarquinii--civita vecchia, the old port of rome--ostia. x. venice, 220 its early days--the grand canal and its palaces--piazza of st. mark--a venetian funeral--the long line of islands- venetian glass--torcello, the ancient altinum--its two unique churches. xi. alexandria, 234 the bleak and barren shores of the nile delta--peculiar shape of the city--strange and varied picture of alexandrian street life--the place mehemet ali--glorious panorama from the cairo citadel--pompey's pillar--the battle of the nile- discovery of the famous inscribed stone at rosetta--port said and the suez canal. xii. malta, 267 "england's eye in the mediterranean"--vast systems of fortifications--sentinels and martial music--the strada reale of valletta--church of st. john--st. elmo--the military hospital, the "very glory of malta"--citta vecchia--saint paul and his voyages. xiii. sicily, 295 scylla and charybdis--messina, the chief commercial center of sicily--the magnificent ruins of the greek theater at taormina--omnipresence of mt. etna--approach to syracuse- the famous latomia del paradiso--girgenti, the city of temples--railway route to palermo--mosaics--cathedral and abbey of monreale--monte pellegrino at the hour of sunset. xiv. naples, 325 the bay of naples--vesuvius--characteristic scenes of street life--the _al fresco_ restaurants--chapel of st. januarius- virgil's tomb--capri, the mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque--the emperor tiberius--description of the blue grotto--the coast-road from castellamare to sorrento- amalfi--sorrento, "the village of flowers and the flower of villages"--the temples of pæstum. list of illustrations. capri.--the marina grande _frontispiece_ page gibraltar.--view from the old mole 14 algiers.--government square and the street, la marine 28 algiers.--interior of the governor's palace 36 malaga.--general view from castle 52 barcelona.--view of harbor 70 marseilles.--panorama of the old port 98 nice.--promenade des anglais 132 the riviera.--san remo 158 genoa.--the doria palace--garden and doorway 172 the tuscan coast.--pisa--cathedral square and monuments 198 venice.--the piazza of st. mark 226 alexandria.--general view of the city 240 alexandria.--scene on canal 260 malta.--general view 274 sicily.--view of taormina and mt. etna 298 naples.--panorama from virgil's tomb 334 the mediterranean i the pillars of hercules portals of the ancient world--bay of tangier at sunrise--tarifa--the rock of gibraltar--wonders of its fortifications--afternoon promenade in the alameda gardens--ascending the rock--view from the highest point--the great siege--ceuta, the principal spanish stronghold on the moorish coast--the rock of many names. the "pillars of hercules!" the portals of the ancient world! to how many a traveller just beginning to tire of his week on the atlantic, or but slowly recovering, it may be, in his tranquil voyage along the coasts of portugal and southern spain, from the effects of thirty unquiet hours in the bay of biscay, has the nearing view of this mighty landmark of history brought a message of new life! that distant point ahead, at which the narrowing waters of the strait that bears him disappear entirely within the clasp of the embracing shores, is for many such a traveller the beginning of romance. he gazes upon it from the westward with some dim reflection of that mysterious awe with which antiquity looked upon it from the east. the progress of the ages has, in fact, transposed the center of human interest and the human point of view. now, as in the homeric era, the pillars of hercules form the gateway of a world of wonder; but for us of to-day it is within and not without those portals that that world of wonder lies. to the eye of modern poetry the atlantic and mediterranean have changed places. in the waste of waters stretching westward from the rock of calpe and its sister headland, the greek of the age of homer found his region of immemorial poetic legend and venerable religious myth, and peopled it with the gods and heroes of his traditional creed. here, on the bosom of the wide-winding river oceanus, lay the islands of the blest--that abode of eternal beauty and calm, where "the life of mortals is most easy," where "there is neither snow nor winter nor much rain, but ocean is ever sending up the shrilly breezes of zephyrus to refresh man." but for us moderns who have explored this mighty "river oceanus," this unknown and mysterious atlantic to its farthest recesses, the glamor of its mystery has passed away for ever; and it is eastward and not westward, through the "pillars of hercules," that we now set our sails in search of the region of romance. it is to the basin of the mediterranean--fringed with storied cities and venerable ruins, with the crumbling sanctuaries of a creed which has passed away, and the monuments of an art which is imperishable--that man turns to-day. the genius of civilization has journeyed far to the westward, and has passed through strange experiences; it returns with new reverence and a deeper awe to that _enclave_ of mid-europe which contains its birthplace, and which is hallowed with the memories of its glorious youth. the grand cliff-portal which we are approaching is the entrance, the thoughtful traveller will always feel, to a region eternally sacred in the history of man; to lands which gave birth to immortal models of literature and unerring canons of philosophic truth; to shrines and temples which guard the ashes of those "dead but sceptered sovereigns" who "rule our spirits from their urns." as our vessel steams onward through the rapidly narrowing straits, the eye falls upon a picturesque irregular cluster of buildings on the spanish shore, wherefrom juts forth a rocky tongue of land surmounted by a tower. it is the pharos of tarifa, and in another half hour we are close enough to distinguish the exact outlines of the ancient and famous city named of tarif ibn malek, the first berber sheikh who landed in spain, and itself, it is said--though some etymologists look askance at the derivation--the name-mother of a word which is little less terrible to the modern trader than was this pirate's nest itself to his predecessor of old times. the arms of tarifa are a castle on waves, with a key at the window, and the device is not unaptly symbolical of her mediæval history, when her possessors played janitors of the strait, and merrily levied blackmail--the irregular _tariff_ of those days--upon any vessel which desired to pass. the little town itself is picturesquely situated in the deepest embrace of the curving strait, and the view looking westward--with the lighthouse rising sharp and sheer against the sky, from the jutting cluster of rock and building about its base, while dimly to the left in the farther distance lie the mountains of the african coast, descending there so cunningly behind the curve that the two continents seem to touch and connect the channel into a lake--is well worth attentive study. an interesting spot, too, is tarifa, as well as a picturesque--interesting at least to all who are interested either in the earlier or the later fortunes of post-roman europe. it played its part, as did most other places, on this common battle-ground of aryan and semite, in the secular struggle between european christendom and the mohammedan east. and again, centuries later, it was heard of in the briefer but more catastrophic struggle of the napoleonic wars. from the day when alonzo perez de guzman threw his dagger down from its battlements in disdainful defiance of the threat to murder his son, dragged bound before him beneath its walls by traitors, it is a "far cry" to the day when colonel gough of the 87th (the "eagle-catchers") beat off marshal victor's besieging army of 1,800 strong, and relieved general campbell and his gallant little garrison; but tarifa has seen them both, and it is worth a visit not only for the sake of the ride from it over the mountains to algeciras and gibraltar, but for its historical associations also, and for its old-world charm. we have taken it, as we propose also to take tangier, a little out of its turn; for the voyaging visitor to gibraltar is not very likely to take either of these two places on his way. it is more probable that he will visit them, the one by land and the other by sea, from the rock itself. but tangier in particular it is impossible to pass without a strong desire to make its acquaintance straightway; so many are the attractions which draw the traveller to this some-time appanage of the british crown, this african _pied à terre_, which but for the insensate feuds and factions of the restoration period might be england's to-day. there are few more enchanting sights than that of the bay of tangier as it appears at sunrise to the traveller whose steamer has dropped down the straits in the afternoon and evening hours of the previous day and cast anchor after nightfall at the nearest point off shore to which a vessel of any draught can approach. nowhere in the world does a nook of such sweet tranquillity receive, and for a season, quiet, the hurrying waters of so restless a sea. half a mile or so out towards the center of the strait, a steamer from gibraltar has to plough its way through the surface currents which speed continually from the atlantic towards the pillars of hercules and the mediterranean beyond. here, under the reddening daybreak, all is calm. the blue waters of the bay, now softly flushing at the approach of sunrise, break lazily in mimic waves and "tender curving lines of creamy spray" upon the shining beach. to the right lies the city, spectral in the dawn, save where the delicate pale ivory of some of its higher houses is warming into faintest rose; while over all, over sea and shore and city, is the immersing crystal atmosphere of africa, in which every rock, every ripple, every housetop, stands out as sharp and clear as the filigree work of winter on a frosted pane. nothing in tangier, it must be honestly admitted, will compare with the approach to it by its incomparable bay. in another sense, too, there is nothing here or elsewhere which exactly resembles this "approach," since its last stage of all has to be performed alike for man and woman--unless man is prepared to wade knee-deep in the clear blue water--on the back of a sturdy moor. once landed, he will find that the picturesqueness of tangier, like that of most eastern cities, diminishes rather than increases on a nearer view. a walk through its main street yields nothing particularly worthy of note, unless it be the minaret of the djama-el-kebir, the principal mosque of the city. the point to which every visitor to tangier directs his steps, or has them directed for him, is the bab-el-sok, the gate of the market place, where the scene to be witnessed at early morning presents an unequaled picture of oriental life. crouching camels with their loads of dates, chaffering traders, chattering women, sly and servile looking jews from the city, fierce-eyed, heavily armed children of the desert, rough-coated horses, and the lank-sided mules, withered crones squatting in groups by the wayside, tripping damsels ogling over the _yashmak_ as they pass, and the whole enveloped in a blinding, bewildering, choking cloud of such dust as only africa, "_arida nutrix_," can produce--such dust as would make the pulverulent particles of the dryest of turnpikes in the hottest of summers, and under the most parching of east winds, appear by comparison moist and cool, and no more than pleasingly titillatory of the mouth and nostrils--let the reader picture to himself such a scene with such accessories, and he will know what spectacle awaits him at early morning at the bab-el-sok of tangier. but we must resume our journey eastward towards the famous "rock." there at last it is! there "dawns gibraltar grand and gray," though mr. browning strains poetic license very hard in making it visible even "in the dimmest north-east distance," to a poet who was at that moment observing how "sunset ran one glorious blood-red recking into cadiz bay." we, at any rate, are far enough away from cadiz before it dawns upon us in all its titanic majesty of outline; grand, of course, with the grandeur of nature, and yet with a certain strange air of human menace as of some piece of atlantean ordnance planted and pointed by the hand of man. this "armamental" appearance of the rock--a look visible, or at any rate imaginable in it, long before we have approached it closely enough to discern its actual fortifications, still less its artillery--is much enhanced by the dead flatness of the land from which its western wall arises sheer, and with which by consequence it seems to have no closer physical connection than has a gun-carriage with the parade ground on which it stands. as we draw nearer this effect increases in intensity. the surrounding country seems to sink and recede around it, and the rock appears to tower ever higher and higher, and to survey the strait and the two continents, divided by it with a more and more formidable frown. as we approach the port, however, this impression gives place to another, and the rock, losing somewhat of its "natural-fortress" air, begins to assume that resemblance to a couchant lion which has been so often noticed in it. yet alas! for the so-called famous "leonine aspect" of the famous height, or alas! at least for the capricious workings of the human imagination! for while to the compiler of one well-reputed guidebook, the outlines of gibraltar seem "like those of a lion asleep, and whose head, somewhat truncated, is turned towards africa as if with a dreamy and steadfast deep attention;" to another and later observer the lion appears to have "his kingly head turned towards spain, as if in defiance of his former master, every feature having the character of leonine majesty and power!" the truth is, of course, that the rock assumes entirely different aspects, according as it is looked at from different points of view. there is certainly a point from which gibraltar may be made, by the exercise of a little of polonius's imagination, to resemble some couchant animal with its head turned towards africa--though "a head somewhat truncated," is as odd a phrase as a "body somewhat decapitated"--and contemplating that continent with what we may fancy, if we choose, to be "dreamy and steadfast attention." but the resemblance is, at best, but a slender one, and a far-fetched. the really and strikingly leonine aspect of gibraltar is undoubtedly that which it presents to the observer as he is steaming towards the rock from the west, but has not yet come into full view of the slope on which the town is situated. no one can possibly mistake the lion then. his head is distinctly turned towards spain, and what is more, he has a foot stretched out towards the mainland, as though in token of his mighty grasp upon the soil. viewed, however, from the neutral ground, this protean cliff takes on a new shape altogether, and no one would suppose that the lines of that sheer precipice, towering up into a jagged pinnacle, could appear from any quarter to melt into the blunt and massive curves which mark the head and shoulders of the king of beasts. at last, however, we are in the harbor, and are about to land. to land! how little does that phrase convey to the inexperienced in sea travel, or to those whose voyages have begun and ended in stepping from a landing-stage on to a gangway, and from a gangway on to a deck, and _vice-versâ_! and how much does it mean for him to whom it comes fraught with recollections of steep descents, of heaving seas, of tossing cock-boats, perhaps of dripping garments, certainly of swindling boatmen! there are disembarkations in which you come in for them all; but not at gibraltar, at least under normal circumstances. the waters of the port are placid, and from most of the many fine vessels that touch there you descend by a ladder, of as agreeable an inclination as an ordinary flight of stairs. all you have to fear is the insidious bilingual boatman, who, unless you strictly covenant with him before entering his boat, will have you at his mercy. it is true that he has a tariff, and that you might imagine that the offense of exceeding it would be punished in a place like gibraltar by immediate court-martial and execution; but the traveller should not rely upon this. there is a deplorable relaxation of the bonds of discipline all over the world. moreover, it is wise to agree with the boatmen for a certain fixed sum, as a salutary check upon undue liberality. most steamers anchor at a considerable distance from the shore, and on a hot day one might be tempted by false sentiment to give the boatman an excessive fee. your hosts at gibraltar--"spoiling" as they always are for the sight of new civilian faces--show themselves determined from the first to make you at home. private thomas atkins on sentry duty grins broad welcome to you from the mole. the official to whom you have to give account of yourself and your belongings greets you with a pleasant smile, and, while your french or spanish fellow-traveller is strictly interrogated as to his identity, profession, purpose of visit, &c., your english party is passed easily and promptly in, as men "at home" upon the soil which they are treading. fortunate is it, if a little bewildering, for the visitor to arrive at midday, for before he has made his way from the landing-place to his hotel he will have seen a sight which has few if any parallels in the world. gibraltar has its narrow, quiet, sleepy alleys as have all southern towns; and any one who confined himself to strolling through and along these, and avoiding the main thoroughfare, might never discover the strangely cosmopolitan character of the place. he must walk up waterport street at midday in order to see what gibraltar really is--a conflux of nations, a mart of races, an exchange for all the multitudinous varieties of the human product. europe, asia, and africa meet and jostle in this singular highway. tall, stately, slow-pacing moors from the north-west coast; white-turbaned turks from the eastern gate of the mediterranean; thick-lipped, and woolly-headed negroids from the african interior; quick-eyed, gesticulating levantine greeks; gabardined jews, and black-wimpled jewesses; spanish smugglers, and spanish sailors; "rock-scorpions," and red-coated english soldiers--all these compose, without completing, the motley moving crowd that throngs the main street of gibraltar in the forenoon, and gathers densest of all in the market near commercial square. it is hardly then as a fortress, but rather as a great entrepôt of traffic, that gibraltar first presents itself to the newly-landed visitor. he is now too close beneath its frowning batteries and dominating walls of rock to feel their strength and menace so impressive as at a distance; and the flowing tide of many-colored life around him overpowers the senses and the imagination alike. he has to seek the outskirts of the town on either side in order to get the great rock again, either physically or morally, into proper focus. and even before he sets out to try its height and steepness by the ancient, if unscientific, process of climbing it--nay, before he even proceeds to explore under proper guidance its mighty elements of military strength--he will discover perhaps that sternness is not its only feature. let him stroll round in the direction of the race-course to the north of the rock, and across the parade-ground, which lies between the town and the larger area on which the reviews and field-day evolutions take place, and he will not complain of gibraltar as wanting in the picturesque. the bold cliff, beneath which stands a spanish café, descends in broken and irregular, but striking, lines to the plain, and it is fringed luxuriantly from stair to stair with the vegetation of the south. marching and counter-marching under the shadow of this lofty wall, the soldiers show from a little distance like the tin toys of the nursery, and one knows not whether to think most of the physical insignificance of man beside the brute bulk of nature, or of the moral--or immoral--power which has enabled him to press into his service even the vast rock which stands there beetling and lowering over him, and to turn the blind giant into a sort of titanic man-at-arms. such reflections as these, however, would probably whet a visitor's desire to explore the fortifications without delay; and the time for that is not yet. the town and its buildings have first to be inspected; the life of the place, both in its military and--such as there is of it--its civil aspect, must be studied; though this, truth to tell, will not engage even the minutest observer very long. gibraltar is not famous for its shops, or remarkable, indeed, as a place to buy anything, except tobacco, which, as the spanish exchequer knows to its cost (and the spanish customs' officials on the frontier too, it is to be feared, their advantage), is both cheap and good. business, however, of all descriptions is fairly active, as might be expected, when we recollect that the town is pretty populous for its size, and numbers some 20,000 inhabitants, in addition to its garrison of from 5,000 to 6,000 men. with all its civil activity, however, the visitor is scarcely likely to forget--for any length of time--that he is in a "place of arms." not to speak of the shocks communicated to his unaccustomed nerves by morning and evening gun-fire; not to speak of the thrilling fanfare of the bugles, executed as only the bugler of a crack english regiment can execute it, and echoed and re-echoed to and fro, from face to face of the rock, there is an indefinable air of stern order, of rigid discipline, of authority whose word is law, pervading everything. as the day wears on toward the evening this aspect of things becomes more and more unmistakable; and in the neighborhood of the gates, towards the hour of gun-fire, you may see residents hastening in, and non-residents quickening the steps of their departure, lest the boom of the fatal cannon-clock should confine or exclude them for the night. after the closing of the gates it is still permitted for a few hours to perambulate the streets; but at midnight this privilege also ceases, and no one is allowed out of doors without a night-pass. on the 31st of december a little extra indulgence is allowed. one of the military bands will perhaps parade the main thoroughfare discoursing the sweet strains of "auld lang syne," and the civil population are allowed to "see the old year out and the new year in." but a timid and respectful cheer is their sole contribution to the ceremony, and at about 12.15 they are marched off again to bed: such and so vigilant are the precautions against treachery within the walls, or surprise from without. in gibraltar, undoubtedly, you experience something of the sensations of men who are living in a state of siege, or of those knights of branksome who ate and drank in armor, and lay down to rest with corslet laced, and with the buckler for a pillow. the lions of the town itself, as distinguished from the wonders of its fortifications, are few in number. the cathedral, the garrison library, government house, the alameda gardens, the drive to europa point exhaust the list; and there is but one of these which is likely to invite--unless for some special purpose or other--a repetition of the visit. in the alameda, however, a visitor may spend many a pleasant hour, and--if the peace and beauty of a hillside garden, with the charms of subtropical vegetation in abundance near at hand, and noble views of coast and sea in the distance allure him--he assuredly will. gibraltar is immensely proud of its promenade, and it has good reason to be so. from the point of view of nature and of art the alameda is an equal success. general don, who planned and laid it out some three-quarters of a century ago, unquestionably earned a title to the same sort of tribute as was bestowed upon a famous military predecessor, marshal wade. anyone who had "seen" the alameda "before it was made," might well have "lifted up his hands and blessed" the gallant officer who had converted "the red sands," as the arid desert once occupying this spot was called, into the paradise of geranium-trees which has taken its place. its monuments to elliot and wellington are not ideal: the mysterious curse pronounced upon english statuary appears to follow it even beyond seas; but the execution of the effigies of these national heroes may, perhaps, be forgotten in the interest attaching to their subjects. the residents at any rate, whether civil or military, are inured to these efforts of the sculptor's art, and have long since ceased to repine. and the afternoon promenade in these gardens--with the english officers and their wives and daughters, english nursemaids and their charges, tourists of both sexes and all ages, and the whole surrounded by a polyglot and polychromatic crowd of oriental listeners to the military band--is a sight well worth seeing and not readily to be forgotten. but we must pursue our tour round the peninsula of the rock; and leaving the new mole on our right, and farther on the little land-locked basin of rosia bay, we pass the height of buena vista, crowned with its barracks, and so on to the apex of the promontory, europa point. here are more barracks and, here on europa flats, another open and level space for recreation and military exercises beneath the cliff wall. doubling the point, and returning for a short distance along the eastern side of the promontory, we come to the governor's cottage, a cool summer retreat nestling close to the rock, and virtually marking the limits of our exploration. for a little way beyond this the cliff rises inaccessible, the road ends, and we must retrace our steps. so far as walking or driving along the flat is concerned, the visitor who has reached the point may allege, with a certain kind of superficial accuracy, that he has "done gibraltar." no wonder that the seasoned globe-trotter from across the atlantic thinks nothing of taking calpe in his stride. to those, however, who visit gibraltar in a historic spirit, it is not to be "done" by any means so speedily as this. indeed, it would be more correct to say that the work of a visitor of this order is hardly yet begun. for he will have come to gibraltar not mainly to stroll on a sunny promenade, or to enjoy a shady drive round the seaward slopes of a spanish headland, or even to feast his eyes on the glow of southern color and the picturesque varieties of southern life; but to inspect a great world-fortress, reared almost impregnable by the hand of nature, and raised into absolute impregnability by the art of man; a spot made memorable from the very dawn of the modern period by the rivalries of nations, and famous for all time by one of the most heroic exploits recorded in the annals of the human race. to such an one, we say, the name of gibraltar stands before and beyond everything for the rock of the great siege; and he can no more think of it in the light of a mediterranean watering-place, with, a romantic, if somewhat limited, sea-front, than he can think of the farmhouse of la haye as an "interesting flemish homestead," or the chateau of hougoumont as a belgian gentleman's "eligible country house." [illustration] for him the tour of the renowned fortifications will be the great event of his visit. having furnished himself with the necessary authorization from the proper military authorities (for he will be reminded at every turn of the strict martial discipline under which he lives), he will proceed to ascend the rock, making his first halt at a building which in all probability he will often before this have gazed upon and wondered at from below. this is the moorish castle, the first object to catch the eye of the newcomer as he steps ashore at the mole, and looks up at the houses that clamber up the western slope of the rock. their ascending tiers are dominated by this battlemented pile, and it is from the level on which it stands that one enters the famous galleries of gibraltar. the castle is one of the oldest moorish buildings in spain, the arabic legend over the south gate recording it to have been built in 725 by abu-abul-hajez. its principal tower, the torre del homenaje, is riddled with shot marks, the scars left behind it by the ever-memorable siege. the galleries, which are tunneled in tiers along the north front of the rock, are from two to three miles in extent. at one extremity they widen out into the spacious crypt known as the hall of st. george, in which nelson was feasted. no arches support these galleries; they are simply hewn from the solid rock, and pierced every dozen yards or so by port-holes, through each of which the black muzzle of a gun looks forth upon the spanish mainland. they front the north, these grim watchdogs, and seeing that the plain lies hundreds of feet beneath them, and with that altitude of sheer rock face between them and it, they may perhaps be admitted to represent what a witty frenchman has called _le luxe et la coquetterie d' imprenable_, or as we might put it, a "refinement on the impregnable." artillery in position implies the possibility of regular siege operations, followed perhaps by an assault from the quarter which the guns command; but though the spanish threw up elaborate works on the neutral ground in the second year of the great siege, neither then nor at any other time has an assault on the rock from its northern side been contemplated. yet it has once been "surprised" from its eastern side, which looks almost equally inaccessible; and farther on in his tour of exploration, the visitor will come upon traces of that unprecedented and unimitated exploit. after having duly inspected the galleries, he will ascend to the signal tower, known in spanish days as el hacho, or the torch, the spot at which beacon fires were wont on occasion to be kindled. it is not quite the highest point of the rock, but the view from it is one of the most imposing in the world. to the north lie the mountains of ronda, and to the far east the sierra of the snows that looks down on granada, gleams pale and spectral on the horizon. far beneath you lie town and bay, the batteries with their tiny ordnance, and the harbor with its plaything ships; while farther onward, in the same line of vision, the african "pillar of hercules," ceuta, looks down upon the sunlit waters of the strait. a little farther on is the true highest point of the rock, 1,430 feet; and yet a little farther, after a descent of a few feet, we come upon the tower known as o'hara's folly, from which also the view is magnificent, and which marks the southernmost point of the ridge. it was built by an officer of that name as a watch tower, from which to observe the movements of the spanish fleet at cadiz, which, even across the cape as the crow flies, is distant some fifty or sixty miles. the extent, however, of the outlook which it actually commanded has probably never been tested, certainly not with modern optical appliances, as it was struck by lightning soon after its completion. retracing his steps to the northern end of the height, the visitor historically interested in gibraltar will do well to survey the scene from here once more before descending to inspect the fortifications of the coast line. far beneath him, looking landward, lies the flat sandy part of the isthmus, cut just where its neck begins to widen by the british lines. beyond these, again, extends the zone some half mile in breadth of the neutral ground; while yet farther inland, the eye lights upon a broken and irregular line of earthworks, marking the limit, politically speaking, of spanish soil. these are the most notable, perhaps the only surviving, relic of the great siege. in the third year of that desperate leaguer--it was in 1781--the spaniards having tried in vain, since june, 1779, to starve out the garrison, resorted to the idea of bombarding the town into surrender, and threw up across the neutral ground the great earthworks, of which only these ruins remain. they had reason, indeed, to resort to extraordinary efforts. twice within these twenty-four months had they reduced the town to the most dreadful straits of hunger, and twice had it been relieved by english fleets. in january, 1780, when rodney appeared in the straits with his priceless freight of food, the inhabitants were feeding on thistles and wild onions; the hind quarter of an algerian sheep was selling for seven pounds ten, and an english milch cow for fifty guineas. in the spring of 1781, when admiral darby relieved them for the second time, the price of "bad ship's biscuits full of vermin"--says captain john drinkwater of the 72nd, an actor in the scenes which he has recorded--was a shilling a pound; "old dried peas, a shilling and fourpence; salt, half dirt, the sweepings of ships' bottoms, and storehouses, eightpence; and english farthing candles, sixpence apiece." these terrible privations having failed to break the indomitable spirit of the besieged, bombardment had, before the construction of these lines, been resorted to. enormous batteries, mounting 170 guns and 80 mortars, had been planted along the shore, and had played upon the town, without interruption, for six weeks. houses were shattered and set on fire, homeless and half-starved families were driven for shelter to the southern end of the promontory, where again they were harried by spanish ships sailing round europa point and firing indiscriminately on shore. the troops, shelled out of their quarters, were living in tents on the hillside, save when these also were swept away by the furious rainstorms of that region. and it was to put, as was hoped, the finishing stroke to this process of torture, that the great fortifications which have been spoken of were in course of construction all through the spring and summer of 1781 on the neutral ground. general elliot--that tough old spartan warrior, whose food was vegetables and water, and four hours his maximum of continuous sleep, and the contagion of whose noble example could alone perhaps have given heart enough even to this sturdy garrison--watched the progress of the works with anxiety, and had made up his mind before the winter came that they must be assaulted. accordingly, at three a. m. on the morning of november 27, 1781, he sallied forth with a picked band of two thousand men--a pair of regiments who had fought by his side at minden two-and-twenty years before--and having traversed the three-quarters of a mile of intervening country in swift silence, fell upon the spanish works. the alarm had been given, but only just before the assailants reached the object of their attack; and the affair was practically a surprise. the gunners, demoralized and panic-stricken, were bayoneted at their posts, the guns were spiked, and the batteries themselves set on fire with blazing faggots prepared for the purpose. in an hour the flames had gained such strength as to be inextinguishable, and general elliot drew off his forces and retreated to the town, the last sound to greet their ears as they re-entered the gates being the roar of the explosion of the enemy's magazines. for four days the camp continued to burn, and when the fire had exhausted itself for want of materials, the work of laborious months lay in ruins, and the results of a vast military outlay were scattered to the winds. it was the last serious attempt made against the garrison by the spaniards from the landward side. the fiercest and most furious struggle of the long siege was to take place on the shore and waters to the west. and so after all it is to the "line-wall"--to that formidable bulwark of masonry and gun-metal which fringes the town of gibraltar from the old mole to rosia bay--that one returns as to the chief attraction from the historical point of view, of the mighty fortress. for two full miles it runs, zigzagging along the indented coast, and broken here and there by water-gate or bastion, famous in military story. here, as we move southward from the old mole, is the king's bastion, the most renowned of all. next comes ragged staff stairs, so named from the heraldic insignia of charles v.; and farther on is jumper's battery, situated at what is held to be the weakest part of the rock, and which has certainly proved itself to be so on one ever memorable occasion. for it was at the point where jumper's battery now stands that the first english landing-party set foot on shore; it was at this point, it may be said, that gibraltar was carried. the fortunes of nomenclature are very capricious, and the name of jumper--unless, indeed, it were specially selected for its appropriateness--has hardly a better right to perpetuation in this fashion than the name of hicks. for these were the names of the two gallant officers who were foremost in their pinnaces in the race for the south mole, which at that time occupied the spot where the landing was effected; and we are not aware that history records which was the actual winner. it was on the 23rd of july, 1704, as all the world knows, that these two gallant seamen and their boats' crews made their historic leap on shore; and after all, the accident which had preserved the name of one of them is not more of what is familiarly called a "fluke" than the project of the capture itself, and the retention of the great fortress when captured. it is almost comic to think that when sir george rooke sailed from england, on the voyage from which he returned, figuratively speaking, with the key of the mediterranean in his pocket, he had no more notion of attacking gibraltar than of discovering the north-west passage. he simply went to land england's candidate for the spanish throne, "king charles iii.," at lisbon; which service performed, he received orders from the english government to sail to the relief of nice and villa franca, which were supposed to be in danger from the french, while at the same time he was pressed by charles to "look round" at barcelona, where the people, their aspirant-sovereign thought, were ready to rise in his favor. rooke executed both commissions. that is to say, he ascertained that there was nothing for him to do in either place--that barcelona would not rise, and that nice was in no danger of falling; and the admiral accordingly dropped down the mediterranean towards the straits--where he was joined by sir cloudesley shovel with another squadron--with the view of intercepting the brest fleet of france, which he had heard was about to attempt a junction with that of toulon. the brest fleet, however, he found had already given him the slip, and thus it came about that on the 17th of july these two energetic naval officers found themselves about seven leagues to the east of tetuan with nothing to do. it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the attack on gibraltar was decreed as the distraction of an intolerable ennui. the stronghold was known to be weakly garrisoned, though, for that time, strongly armed; it turned out afterwards that it had only a hundred and fifty gunners to a hundred guns, and it was thought possible to carry the place by a _coup-de-main_. on the 21st the whole fleet came to anchor in gibraltar bay. two thousand men under the prince of hesse were landed on what is now the neutral ground, and cut off all communication with the mainland of spain. on the 23rd rear-admirals vanderdussen and byng (the father of a less fortunate seaman) opened fire upon the batteries, and after five or six hours' bombardment silenced them, and captain whittaker was thereupon ordered to take all the boats, filled with seamen and marines, and possess himself of the south mole head. captains jumper and hicks were, as has been said, in the foremost pinnaces, and were the first to land. a mine exploded under their feet, killing two officers and a hundred men, but jumper and hicks pressed on with their stout followers, and assaulted and carried a redoubt which lay between the mole and the town. whereupon the spanish governor capitulated, the gates on the side of the isthmus were thrown open to the prince of hesse and his troops, and gibraltar was theirs. or rather it was not theirs, except by the title of the "man in possession." it was the property of his highness the archduke charles, styled his majesty king charles iii. of spain, and had he succeeded in making good that title in arms, england should, of course, have had to hand over to him the strongest place in his dominions, at the end of the war. but she profited by the failure of her protégé. the war of the spanish succession ended in the recognition of philip v.; and almost against the will of the nation--for george i. was ready enough to give it up, and the popular english view of the matter was that it was "a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge"--gibraltar remained on her hands. undoubtedly, the king's bastion is the center of historic military interest in gibraltar, but the line-wall should be followed along its impregnable front to complete one's conception of the sea defenses of the great fortress. a little farther on is government house, the quondam convent, which now forms the official residence of the governor; and farther still the landing-place, known as ragged staff stairs. then jumper's bastion, already mentioned; and then the line of fortification, running outwards with the coast line towards the new mole and landing-place, returns upon itself, and rounding rosia bay trends again southward towards buena vista point. a ring of steel indeed--a coat of mail on the giant's frame, impenetrable to the projectiles of the most terrible of the modern titans of the seas. the casemates for the artillery are absolutely bomb-proof, the walls of such thickness as to resist the impact of shots weighing hundreds of pounds, while the mighty arches overhead are constructed to defy the explosion of the heaviest shells. as to its offensive armament, the line-wall bristles with guns of the largest caliber, some mounted on the parapet above, others on the casemates nearer the sea-level, whence their shot could be discharged with the deadliest effect at an attacking ship. he who visits gibraltar is pretty sure, at least if time permits, to visit algeciras and san roque, while from farther afield still he will be tempted by estepona. the first of these places he will be in a hurry, indeed, if he misses; not that the place itself is very remarkable, as that it stands so prominently in evidence on the other side of the bay as almost to challenge a visit. add to this the natural curiosity of a visitor to pass over into spanish territory and to survey gibraltar from the landward side, and it will not be surprising that the four-mile trip across the bay is pretty generally made. on the whole it repays; for though algeciras is modern and uninteresting enough, its environs are picturesque, and the artist will be able to sketch the great rock-fortress from an entirely new point, and in not the least striking of its aspects. and now, before passing once for all through the storied portal of the mediterranean, it remains to bestow at least a passing glance upon the other column which guards the entrance. over against us, as we stand on europa point and look seaward, looms, some ten or a dozen miles away, the punta de africa, the african pillar of hercules, the headland behind which lies ceuta, the principal spanish stronghold on the moorish coast. of a truth, one's first thought is that the great doorway of the inland sea has monstrously unequal jambs. except that the punta de africa is exactly opposite the rock of gibraltar, and that it is the last eminence on the southern side of the straits--the point at which the african coast turns suddenly due southward, and all is open sea--it would have been little likely to have caught the eye of an explorer, or to have forced itself upon the notice of the geographer. such as it is, however, it must stand for the african pillar of hercules, unless that demi-god is to content himself with only one. it is not imposing to approach as we make our way directly across the straits from gibraltar, or down and along them from algeciras towards it: a smooth, rounded hill, surmounted by a fort with the spanish flag floating above it, and walled on the sea side, so little can its defenders trust to the very slight natural difficulties offered even by its most difficult approach. such is ceuta in the distance, and it is little, if at all, more impressive on a closer inspection. its name is said to come from sebta, a corruption of septem, and to have been given it because of the seven hills on which it is built. probably the seven hills would be difficult to find and count, or with a more liberal interpretation of the word, it might very likely be as easy to find fourteen. ceuta, like almost every other town or citadel on this battle-ground of europe and africa, has played its part in the secular struggle between christendom and islam. it is more than four centuries and a half since it was first wrested from the moors by king john of portugal, and in the hands of that state it remained for another two hundred years, when in 1640, it was annexed to the crown of castille. king john's acquisition of the place, however, was unfortunate for his family. he returned home, leaving the princes of portugal in command of his new possession; which, after the repulse of an attempt on the part of the moors to recapture it, he proceeded to strengthen with new fortifications and an increased garrison. dying in 1428, he was succeeded by his eldest son, edward, who undertook an expedition against tangier, which turned out so unluckily that the portuguese had to buy their retreat from africa by a promise to restore ceuta, the king's son, don ferdinand, being left in the hands of the moors as a hostage for its delivery. in spite of this, however, the king and council refused on their return home to carry out their undertaking; and though preparations were made for recovering the unfortunate hostage, the death of edward prevented the project from being carried out, and prince ferdinand remained a prisoner for several years. ceuta was never surrendered, and passing, as has been said, in the seventeenth century from the possession of portugal into that of spain, it now forms one of the four or five vantage-points held by spain on the coast of africa and in its vicinity. surveyed from the neighboring heights, the citadel, with the town stretching away along the neck of land at its foot, looks like anything but a powerful stronghold, and against any less effete and decaying race than the moors who surround it, it might not possibly prove very easy to defend. its garrison, however, is strong, whatever its forts may be, and as a basis of military operations, it proved to be of some value to spain in her expedition against morocco thirty years ago. in times of peace it is used by the spaniards as a convict station. the internal attractions of ceuta to a visitor are not considerable. there are roman remains in the neighborhood of the citadel, and the walls of the town, with the massive archways of its gates, are well worthy of remark. its main feature of interest, however, is, and always will be, that rock of many names which it thrusts forth into the straits, to form, with its brother column across the water, the gateway between the eastern and the western world. we have already looked upon it in the distance from el hacho, the signal tower on the summit of the rock of gibraltar. abyla, "the mountain of god," it was styled by the phoenicians; gibel mo-osa, the hill of musa, was its name among the moors; it is the cabo de bullones of the spaniard, and the apes' hill of the englishman. it may be well seen, though dwarfed a little by proximity, from its neighboring waters; a curious sight, if only for its strange contrast with the european pillar that we have left behind. it is shaped like a miniature peak of teneriffe, with a pointed apex sloping away on either side down high-shouldered ridges towards its companion hills, and presenting a lined and furrowed face to the sea. it is its situation, as has been noted already, and not its conformation, which procured it its ancient name. but however earned, its mythical title, with all the halo of poetry and romance that the immortal myths of hellas have shed around every spot which they have reached, remains to it for ever. and here we take our farewell look of the pillars of hercules to right and left, and borne onwards amidstream by the rushing current of the straits, we pass from the modern into the ancient world. ii algiers "a pearl set in emeralds"--two distinct towns, one ancient, one modern--the great mosque--a mohammedan religious festival--oriental life in perfection--the road to mustapha supérieur--a true moorish villa described--women praying to a sacred tree--excessive rainfall. "algiers," says the arab poet, with genuine oriental love of precious stones in literature, "is a pearl set in emeralds." and even in these degenerate days of frank supremacy in islam, the old moorish town still gleams white in the sun against a deep background of green hillside, a true pearl among emeralds. for it is a great mistake to imagine north africa, as untravelled folk suppose, a dry and desert country of arid rocky mountains. the whole strip of laughing coast which has the atlas for its backbone may rank, on the contrary, as about the dampest, greenest, and most luxuriant region of the mediterranean system. the home of the barbary corsairs is a land of high mountains, deep glens, great gorges; a land of vast pine forests and thick, verdant undergrowth. a thousand rills tumble headlong down its rich ravines; a thousand rivers flow fast through its fertile valleys. for wild flowers algeria is probably unequaled in the whole world; its general aspect in many ways recalls on a smaller scale the less snow-clad parts of eastern switzerland. [illustration] when you approach the old pirate-nest from the sea, the first glimpse of the african coast that greets your expectant eye is a long, serrated chain of great sun-smitten mountains away inland and southward. as the steamer nears the land, you begin, after a while, to distinguish the snowy ridge of the glorious djurjura, which is the bernese oberland of algeria, a huge block of rearing peaks, their summits thick-covered by the virgin snow that feeds in spring a score of leaping torrents. by-and-by, with still nearer approach, a wide bay discloses itself, and a little range of green hills in the foreground detaches itself by degrees from the darker mass of the atlas looming large in the distance behind. this little range is the sahel, an outlier just separated from the main chain in the rear by the once marshy plain of the metidja, now converted by drainage and scientific agriculture into the most fertile lowland region of all north africa. presently, on the seaward slopes of the sahel, a white town bursts upon the eye, a white town so very white, so close, so thick-set, that at first sight you would think it carved entire, in tier after tier, from a solid block of marble. no street or lane or house or public building of any sort stands visible from the rest at a little distance; just a group of white steps, you would say, cut out by giant hands from the solid hillside. the city of the deys looks almost like a chalk-pit on the slope of an english down; only a chalk-pit in relief, built out, not hewn inwards. as you enter the harbor the strange picture resolves itself bit by bit with charming effect into its component elements. white houses rise up steep, one above the other, in endless tiers and rows, upon a very abrupt acclivity. most of them are moorish in style, square, flat-roofed boxes; all are whitewashed without, and smiling like pretty girls that show their pearly teeth in the full southern sunshine. from without they have the aspect of a single solid block of stone; you would fancy it was impossible to insert a pin's head between them. from within, to him that enters, sundry narrow and tortuous alleys discover themselves here and there on close inspection; but they are too involved to produce much effect as of streets or rows on the general _coup d'oeil_ from the water. land at the quay, and you find at once algiers consists of two distinct towns: one ancient, one modern; one oriental, one western. now and again these intersect, but for the most part they keep themselves severely separate. the lower town has been completely transformed within half a century by its french masters. what it has gained in civilization it has lost in picturesqueness. a spacious port has been constructed, with massive mole and huge arcaded breakwater. inside, vast archways support a magnificent line of very modern quays, bordered by warehouses on a scale that would do honor to marseilles or to liverpool. broad streets run through the length and breadth of this transformed algiers, streets of stately shops where ladies can buy all the fripperies and fineries of parisian dressmakers. yet even here the traveller finds himself already in many ways _en plein orient_. the general look of the new town itself is far more eastern than that of modernized alexandria since the days of the bombardment. arabs, moors and kabyles crowd the streets and market-places; muffled women in loose white robes, covered up to the eyes, flit noiselessly with slippered feet over the new-flagged pavement; turbaned jews, who might have stepped straight out of the "arabian nights," chaffer for centimes at the shop-doors with hooded mountain berbers. all is strange and incongruous; all is paris and bagdad shaking hands as if on the devonshire hillsides. nor are even oriental buildings of great architectural pretensions wanting to this newer french city. the conquerors, in reconstructing algiers on the parisian model, have at least forborne to haussmannise in every instance the old mosques and palaces. the principal square, a broad place lined with palm-trees, is enlivened and made picturesque by the white round dome and striking minarets of the mosquée de la pêcherie. hard by stands the cathedral, a religious building of mussulman origin, half christianized externally by a tower at each end, but enclosing within doors its old mohammedan _mimbar_ and many curious remains of quaint moorish decoration. the archbishopric at its side is a moorish palace of severe beauty and grandeur; the museum of græco-roman antiques is oddly installed in the exquisite home raised for himself by mustapha pasha. the great mosque, in the rue bab-el-oued, remains to us unspoiled as the finest architectural monument of the early mohammedan world. that glorious pile was built by the very first arab conquerors of north africa, the companions of the prophet, and its exquisite horse-shoe arches of pure white marble are unsurpassed in the moslem world for their quaintness, their oddity, and their originality. the interior of this mosque is, to my mind, far more impressive than anything to be seen even in cairo itself, so vast it is, so imposing, so grand, so gloomy. the entire body of the building is occupied throughout by successive arcades, supported in long rows by plain, square pillars. decoration there is none; the mosque depends for effect entirely on its architectural features and its noble proportions. but the long perspective of these endless aisles, opening out to right and left perpetually as you proceed, strikes the imagination of the beholder with a solemn sense of vastness and mystery. as you pick your way, shoeless, among the loose mats on the floor, through those empty long corridors, between those buttress-like pillars, the soul shrinks within you, awe-struck. the very absence of images or shrines, the simplicity and severity, gives one the true semitic religious thrill. no gauds or gewgaws here. you feel at once you are in the unseen presence of the infinite and the incomprehensible. the very first time i went into the great mosque happened, by good luck, to be the day of a mohammedan religious festival. rows and rows of arabs in white robes filled up the interspaces of the columns, and rose and fell with one accord at certain points of the service. from the dim depths by the niche that looks towards mecca a voice of some unseen ministrant droned slowly forth loud arabic prayers or long verses from the koran. at some invisible signal, now and again, the vast throng of worshippers, all ranged in straight lines at even distances between the endless pillars, prostrated themselves automatically on their faces before allah, and wailed aloud as if in conscious confession of their own utter unworthiness. the effect was extraordinary, electrical, contagious. no religious service i have ever seen elsewhere seemed to me to possess such a profundity of earnest humiliation, as of man before the actual presence of his maker. it appeared to one like a chapter of nehemiah come true again in our epoch. we few intrusive westerns, standing awe-struck by the door, slunk away, all abashed, from this scene of deep abasement. we had no right to thrust ourselves upon the devotions of these intense orientals. we felt ourselves out of place. we had put off our shoes, for the place we stood upon was holy ground. but we slunk back to the porch, and put them on again in silence. outside, we emerged upon the nineteenth century and the world. yet even so, we had walked some way down the place de la régence, among the chattering negro pedlers, before one of us dared to exchange a single word with the other. if the new town of algiers is interesting, however, the old town is unique, indescribable, incomprehensible. no map could reproduce it; no clue could unravel it. it climbs and clambers by tortuous lanes and steep staircases up the sheer side of a high hill to the old fortress of the deys that crowns the summit. not one gleam of sunshine ever penetrates down those narrow slits between the houses, where two people can just pass abreast, brushing their elbows against the walls, and treading with their feet in the poached filth of the gutter. the dirt that chokes the sides is to the dirt of italy as the dirt of italy is to the dirt of whitechapel. and yet so quaint, so picturesque, so interesting is it all, that even delicate ladies, with the fear of typhoid fever for ever before their eyes, cannot refuse themselves the tremulous joy of visiting it and exploring it over and over again; nay, more, of standing to bargain for old brass-work or algerian embroidery with keen arab shopkeepers in its sunless labyrinths. except the mooskee at cairo, indeed, i know no place yet left where you can see oriental life in perfection as well as the old town of algiers. for are there not tramways nowadays even in the streets of damascus? has not a railway station penetrated the charmed heart of stamboul? the frank has done his worst for the lower town of his own building, but the upper town still remains as picturesque, as mysterious, and as insanitary as ever. no pasteur could clean out those augean stables. in those malodorous little alleys, where every prospect pleases and every scent is vile, nobody really walks; veiled figures glide softly as if to inaudible music; ladies, muffled up to their eyes, use those solitary features with great effect upon the casual passer-by; old moors, in stately robes, emerge with stealthy tread from half-unseen doorways; boys clad in a single shirt sit and play pitch-and-toss for pence on dark steps. everything reeks impartially of dirt and of mystery. all is gloom and shade. you could believe anything on earth of that darkling old town. there all oriental fancies might easily come true, all fables might revive, all dead history might repeat itself. these two incongruous worlds, the ancient and the modern town, form the two great divisions of algiers as the latter-day tourist from our cold north knows it. the one is antique, lazy, sleepy, unprogressive; the other is bustling, new-world, busy, noisy, commercial. but there is yet a third algiers that lies well without the wall, the algiers of the stranger and of the winter resident. hither mr. cook conducts his eager neophytes; hither the swiss innkeeper summons his cosmopolitan guests. it reaches its culminating point about three miles from the town, on the heights of mustapha supérieur, where charming villas spread thick over the sunlit hills, and where the western visitor can enjoy the north african air without any unpleasant addition of fine old crusted moorish perfumes. the road to mustapha supérieur lies through the bab-azzoun gate, and passes first along a wide street thronged with arabs and kabyles from the country and the mountains. this is the great market road of algiers, the main artery of supplies, a broad thoroughfare lined with _fondouks_ or caravanserais, where the weary camel from the desert deposits his bales of dates, and where black faces of saharan negroes smile out upon the curious stranger from dense draping folds of some dirty burnouse. the cafés are filled with every variety of moslem, jew, turk, and infidel. nowhere else will you see to better advantage the wonderful variety of races and costumes that distinguishes algiers above most other cosmopolitan mediterranean cities. the dark m'zabite from the oases, arrayed like joseph in a coat of many colors, stands chatting at his own door with the pale-faced melancholy berber of the aurès mountains. the fat and dusky moor, over-fed on kous-kous, jostles cheek by jowl with the fair jewess in her paisley shawl and quaint native head-gear. mahonnais spaniards from the balearic isles, girt round their waists with red scarves, talk gaily to french missionary priests in violet bands and black cassocks. old arabs on white donkeys amble with grave dignity down the center of the broad street, where chasseurs in uniform and spahis in crimson cloaks keep them company on fiery steeds from the government stud at blidah. all is noise and bustle, hurry, scurry, and worry, the ant-hill life of an english bazaar grotesquely superimposed on the movement and stir of a great european city. you pass through the gates of the old moorish town and find yourself at once in a modern but still busy suburb. then on a sudden the road begins to mount the steep mustapha slope by sharp zigzags and bold gradients. in native algerian days, before allah in his wisdom mysteriously permitted the abhorred infidel to bear sway in the emerald city over the faithful of islam, a single narrow mule-path ascended from the town wall to the breezy heights of mustapha. it still exists, though deserted, that old breakneck mussulman road a deep cutting through soft stone, not unlike a devonshire lane, all moss-grown and leafy, a favorite haunt of the naturalist and the trap-door spider. but the french engineers, most famous of road-makers, knew a more excellent way. shortly after the conquest they carved a zigzag carriage-drive of splendid dimensions up that steep hill-front, and paved it well with macadam of most orthodox solidity. at the top, in proof of their triumph over nature and the moslem, they raised a tiny commemorative monument, the colonne voirol, after their commander's name, now the clapham junction of all short excursions among the green dells of the sahel. the mustapha road, on its journey uphill, passes many exquisite villas of the old moorish corsairs. the most conspicuous is that which now forms the governor-general's summer palace, a gleaming white marble pile of rather meretricious and over-ornate exterior, but all glorious within, to those who know the secret of decorative art, with its magnificent heirloom of antique tiled dados. many of the other ancient villas, however, and notably the one occupied by lady mary smith-barry, are much more really beautiful, even if less externally pretentious, than the summer palace. one in particular, near the last great bend of the road, draped from the ground to the flat roof with a perfect cataract of bloom by a crimson bougainvillea, may rank among the most picturesque and charming homes in the french dominions. [illustration] it is at mustapha, or along the el biar road, that the english colony of residents or winter visitors almost entirely congregates. nothing can be more charming than this delicious quarter, a wilderness of villas, with its gleaming white moorish houses half lost in rich gardens of orange, palm, and cypress trees. how infinitely lovelier these eastern homes than the fantastic extravagances of the californie at cannes, or the sham antiques on the mont boron! the native north african style of architecture answers exactly to the country in whose midst it was developed. in our cold northern climes those open airy arcades would look chilly and out of place, just as our castles and cottages would look dingy and incongruous among the sunny nooks of the atlas. but here, on the basking red african soil, the milk-white moorish palace with its sweeping saracenic arches, its tiny round domes, its flat, terraced roofs, and its deep perspective of shady windows, seems to fit in with land and climate as if each were made for the other. life becomes absolutely fairy-like in these charming old homes. each seems for the moment while you are in it just a dream in pure marble. i am aware that to describe a true moorish villa is like describing the flavor of a strawberry; the one must be tasted, the other seen. but still, as the difficulty of a task gives zest to the attempt at surmounting it, i will try my hand at a dangerous word-picture. most of the mustapha houses have an outer entrance-court, to which you obtain admission from the road by a plain, and often rather heavy, archway. but, once you have reached the first atrium, or uncovered central court, you have no reason to complain of heaviness or want of decoration. the court-yard is generally paved with parti-colored marble, and contains in its center a pompeian-looking fountain, whose cool water bubbles over into a shallow tank beneath it. here reeds and tall arums lift their stately green foliage, and bright pond-blossoms rear on high their crimson heads of bloom. round the quadrangle runs a covered arcade (one might almost say a cloister) of horse-shoe arches, supported by marble columns, sometimes græco-roman antiques, sometimes a little later in date, but admirably imitated from the originals. this outer court is often the most charming feature of the whole house. here, on sultry days, the ladies of the family sit with their books or their fancy-work; here the lord of the estate smokes his afternoon cigar; here the children play in the shade during the hottest african noon-day. it is the place for the siesta, for the afternoon tea, for the lounge in the cool of the evening, for the joyous sense of the delight of mere living. from the court-yard a second corridor leads into the house itself, whose center is always occupied by a large square court, like the first in ground-plan, but two-storied and glass-covered. this is the hall, or first reception room, often the principal apartment of the whole house, from which the other rooms open out in every direction. usually the ground-floor of the hall has an open arcade, supporting a sort of balcony or gallery above, which runs right round the first floor on top of it. this balcony is itself arcaded; but instead of the arches being left open the whole way up, they are filled in for the first few feet from the floor with a charming balustrade of carved cairene woodwork. imagine such a court, ringed round with string-courses of old oriental tiles, and decorated with a profusion of fine pottery and native brasswork, and you may form to yourself some faint mental picture of the common remodeled algerian villa. it makes one envious again to remember how many happy days one has spent in some such charming retreats, homes where all the culture and artistic taste of the west have been added to all the exquisite decorative instinct and insight of the oriental architect. nor are fair outlooks wanting. from many points of view on the mustapha hill the prospect is among the most charming in the western mediterranean. sir lambert playfair, indeed, the learned and genial british consul-general whose admirable works on algeria have been the delight of every tourist who visits that beautiful country, is fond of saying that the two finest views on the inland sea are, first, that from the greek theater at taormina, and, second, that from his own dining-room windows on the hill-top at el biar. this is very strong praise, and it comes from the author of a handbook to the mediterranean who has seen that sea in all aspects, from gibralta to syria; yet i fancy it is too high, especially when one considers that among the excluded scenes must be put naples, sorrento, amalfi, palermo, and the long stretch of venice as seen from the lido. i would myself even rank the outlook on monaco from the slopes of cap martin, and the glorious panorama of nice and the maritime alps from the lighthouse hill at antibes, above any picture to be seen from the northern spurs of the sahel. let us be just to piræus before we are generous to el biar. but all this is, after all, a mere matter of taste, and no lover of the picturesque would at any rate deny that the bay of algiers, as viewed from the mustapha hill, ranks deservedly high among the most beautiful sights of the mediterranean. and when the sunset lights up in rosy tints the white mole and the marble town, the resulting scene is sometimes one of almost fairy-like splendor. indeed, the country round mustapha is a district of singular charm and manifold beauty. the walks and drives are delicious. great masses of pale white clematis hang in sheets from the trees, cactus and aloe run riot among the glens, sweet scents of oleander float around the deep ravines, delicious perfumes of violets are wafted on every breeze from unseen and unsuspected gardens. nowhere do i know a landscape so dotted with houses, and nowhere are the houses themselves so individually interesting. the outlook over the bay, the green dells of the foreground, the town on its steep acclivity, the points and headlands, and away above all, in the opposite direction, the snow-clad peaks of the djurjura, make up a picture that, after all, has few equals or superiors on our latter-day planet. one of the sights of mustapha is the arab cemetery, where once a week the women go to pray and wail, with true eastern hyperbole, over the graves of their dead relations. by the custom of islam they are excluded from the mosques and from all overt participation in the public exercises of religion; but these open-air temples not made with hands, even the prophet himself has never dared to close to them. ancestor-worship and the veneration of the kindred dead have always borne a large part in the domestic creed of the less civilized semites, and, like many other traces of heathenism, this antique cult still peeps sturdily through the thin veil of mohammedan monotheism. every hillock in the atlas outliers is crowned by the tiny domed tomb, or _koubba_, of some local saint; every sacred grove overshadows the relics of some reverend marabout. nay, the very oldest forms of semitic idolatry, the cult of standing stones, of holy trees, and of special high places on the mountain-tops, survive to this day even in the midst of islam. it is the women in particular who keep alive these last relics of pre-moslem faith; it is the women that one may see weeping over the narrow graves of their loved ones, praying for the great desire of the semitic heart, a man-child from allah, before the sacred tree of their pagan ancestors, or hanging rags and dolls as offerings about the holy grove which encloses the divine spring of pure and hallowed water. algiers is thus in many ways a most picturesque winter resort. but it has one great drawback: the climate is moist and the rainfall excessive. those who go there must not expect the dry desert breeze that renders luxor and assiout so wholesome and so unpleasant. beautiful vegetation means rain and heat. you will get both in algiers, and a fine mediterranean tossing on your journey to impress it on your memory. iii malaga a nearly perfect climate--continuous existence of thirty centuries--granada and the world-renowned alhambra--systems of irrigation--vineyards the chief source of wealth--esparto grass--the famous cape de gatt--the highest peak of the sierra nevada--last view of granada. malaga has been very differently described and appreciated. the arab chroniclers who knew it in the palmy days of the moorish domination considered it "a most beautiful city, densely peopled, large and most excellent." some rose to poetical rhapsody in describing it; they praised it as "the central jewel of a necklace, a land of paradise, the pole star, the diadem of the moon, the forehead of a bewitching beauty unveiled." a spanish poet was not less eloquent, and sang of malaga as "the enchantress, the home of eternal spring, bathed by the soft sea, nestling amidst flowers." ford, on the other hand, that prince of guide-book makers, who knew the spain of his day intimately from end to end, rather despised malaga. he thought it a fine but purely commercial city, having "few attractions beyond climate, almonds and raisins, and sweet wine." malaga has made great strides nevertheless in the fifty-odd years since ford so wrote of it. while preserving many of the charming characteristics which evoked such high-flown encomiums in the past, it has developed considerably in trade, population, and importance. it grows daily; building is constantly in progress, new streets are added year after year to the town. its commerce flourishes; its port is filled with shipping which carry off its many manufactures: chocolate, liquorice, porous jars, and clay figures, the iron ores that are smelted on the spot; the multifarious products of its fertile soil, which grows in rich profusion the choicest fruits of the earth: grapes, melons, plantains, guava, quince, japanese medlars, oranges, lemons, and prickly pears. all the appliances and luxurious aids to comfort known to our latter-day civilization are to be found in malaga: several theaters, one of them an opera house, clubs, grand hotels, bankers, english doctors, cabs. it rejoices too in an indefeasible and priceless gift, a nearly perfect climate, the driest and balmiest in southern europe. rain falls in malaga but half a dozen days in the year, and its winter sun would shame that of an english summer. it has a southern aspect, and is sheltered from the north by an imposing range of mountains; its only trouble is the _terral_ or north-west wind, the same disagreeable visitor as that known on the italian riviera as the tramontana, and in the south of france as the mistral. these climatic advantages have long recommended malaga as a winter health resort for delicate and consumptive invalids, and an increasingly successful rival to madeira, malta, and algiers. the general view of this city of sunshine, looking westward, to which point it lies open, is pleasing and varied; luxuriant southern vegetation, aloes, palmetto, and palms, fill up the foreground; in the middle distance are the dazzling white façades and towers of the town, the great amphitheater of the bull ring, the tall spire of the cathedral a very conspicuous object, the whole set off by the dark blue mediterranean, and the reddish-purple background of the sierra bermeja or vermilion hills. there is active enjoyment to be got in and near malaga as well as the mere negative pleasure of a calm, lazy life amid beautiful scenes. it is an excellent point of departure for interesting excursions. malaga lies on the fringe of a country full of great memories, and preserving many curious antiquarian remains. it is within easy reach by rail of granada and the world-renowned alhambra, whence the ascent of the great southern snowy range, the sierra nevada, may be made with pleasurable excitement and a minimum of discomfort. other towns closely associated with great events may also be visited: alhama, the mountain key of granada, whose capture preluded that of the moorish capital and is enshrined in byron's beautiful verse; ronda, the wildly picturesque town lying in the heart of its own savage hills; almeria, antequera, archidona, all old moorish towns. by the coast road westward, a two days' ride, through estepona and marbella, little seaside towns bathed by the tideless mediterranean, gibraltar may be reached. inland, a day's journey, are the baths of caratraca, delightfully situated in a narrow mountain valley, a cleft of the rugged hill, and famous throughout spain. the waters are akin to those of harrogate, and are largely patronized by crowds of the bluest-blooded hidalgos, the most fashionable people, spaniards from la corte (madrid), and all parts of the peninsula. yet another series of riding excursions may be made into the wild alpujarras, a desolate and uncultivated district gemmed with bright oases of verdure, which are best reached by the coast road leading from malaga through velez malaga, motril to adra, and which is perhaps the pleasantest route to granada itself. on one side is the dark-blue sea; on the other, vine-clad hills: this is a land, to use ford's words, "overflowing with oil and wine; here is the palm without the desert, the sugar-cane without the slave;" old moorish castles perched like eagles' eyries crown the hills; below cluster the spires and towers of churches and convents, hemmed in by the richest vegetation. the whole of this long strip of coast is rich with the alluvial deposits brought down by the mountain torrents from the snowy sierras above; in spring time, before the summer heats have parched the land, everything flourishes here, the sweet potato, indigo, sugar-cane and vine; masses of wild flowers in innumerable gay colors, the blue iris, the crimson oleander, geraniums, and luxuriant festoons of maidenhair ferns bedeck the landscape around. it is impossible to exaggerate the delights of these riding trips; the traveller relying upon his horse, which carries a modest kit, enjoys a strange sense of independence: he can go on or stop, as he chooses, lengthen or shorten his day's journey, which takes him perpetually and at the leisurely pace which permits ample observation of the varied views. the scene changes constantly: now he threads a half-dried watercourse, thick with palmetto and gum cistus; now he makes the slow circuit of a series of little rocky bays washed by the tideless calm of the blue sea; now he breasts the steep slope, the seemingly perilous ascent of bold cliffs, along which winds the track made centuries since when the most direct was deemed the shortest way to anywhere in spite of the difficulties that intervened. malaga as a seaport and place of settlement can claim almost fabulous antiquity. it was first founded by the phoenicians three thousand years ago, and a continuous existence of thirty centuries fully proves the wisdom of their choice. its name is said to be phoenician, and is differently derived from a word meaning salt, and another which would distinguish it as "the king's town." from the earliest ages malaga did a thriving business in salt fish; its chief product and export were the same anchovies and the small _boquerones_, not unlike an english whitebait, which are still the most highly prized delicacies of the malaga fish market. southern spain was among the richest and most valued of phoenician possessions. it was a mine of wealth to them, the tarshish of biblical history from which they drew such vast supplies of the precious metals that their ships carried silver anchors. hiram, king of tyre, was a sort of goldsmith to solomon, furnishing the wise man's house with such stores of gold and silver utensils that silver was "accounted nothing therein," as we read in the first book of kings. when the star of tyre and sidon waned, and carthage became the great commercial center of the mediterranean, it controlled the mineral wealth of spain and traded largely with malaga. later, when spain passed entirely into roman hands, this southern province of boetica grew more and more valuable, and the wealth of the country passed through its ports eastward to the great marts of the world. malaga however, was never the equal either in wealth or commercial importance of its more eastern and more happily placed neighbor almeria. the latter was the once famous "portus magnus," or great port, which monopolized most of the maritime traffic with italy and the more distant east. but malaga rose in prosperity as roman settlers crowded into boetica, and roman remains excavated in and around the town attest the size and importance of the place under the romans. it was a municipium, had a fine ampitheater, the foundations of which were laid bare long afterwards in building a convent, while many bronzes, fragments of statuary, and roman coins found from time to time prove the intimate relations between malaga and the then mistress of the world. the goths, who came next, overran boetica, and although their stay was short, they rechristened the province, which is still known by their name, the modern andal-, or vandalucia. malaga was a place of no importance in the time of the visigoths, and it declined, only to rise with revived splendor under the moors, when it reached the zenith of its greatness, and stood high in rank among the hispano-mauresque cities. it was the same one-eyed berber general, tarik, who took gibraltar who was the first moorish master of malaga. legendary story still associates a gate in the old moorish castle, the gibralfaro, with the moorish invasion. this puerta de la cava was called, it has been said, after the ill-used daughter of count julyan whose wrongs led to the appeal to moorish intervention. but it is not known historically that count julyan had a daughter named la cava, or any daughter at all; nor is it likely that the moors would remember the christian maiden's name as sponsor for the gate. after the moorish conquest malaga fell to the tribes that came from the river jordan, a pastoral race who extended their rule to the open lands as far as archidona. the richness of their new possession attracted great hordes of arabs from their distant homes; there was a general exodus, and each as it came to the land of promise settled where they found anything that recalled their distant homes. thus the tribes from the deserts of palmyra found a congenial resting-place on the arid coast near almeria and the more rugged kingdom of murcia; the syrian mountaineers established themselves amidst the rocky fastness of the ronda serranía; while those from damascus and bagdad reveled in the luxuriant beauty of the fertile plains watered by the xenil and darro, the great vega, with its orange-groves and jeweled gardens that still make granada a smiling paradise. these moslem conquerors were admirable in their administration and development of the land they seized, quick to perceive its latent resources and make the most of them. malaga itself became the court and seat of government of a powerful dynasty whose realms extended inland as far as cordova, and the region around grew under their energetic and enlightened management into one great garden teeming with the most varied vegetation. what chiefly commended malaga to the moors was the beauty of its climate and the amazing fertility of the soil. the first was a god-sent gift, the latter made unstinting return for the labor freely but intelligently applied. water was and still is the great need of those thirsty and nearly rainless southern lands, and the moorish methods of irrigation, ample specimens of which still survive, were most elaborate and effective contrivances for distributing the fertilizing fluid. many of these ancient systems of irrigation are still at work at murcia, valencia, granada, and elsewhere. the moors were masters of hydraulic science, which was never more widely or intelligently practiced than in the east. so the methods adopted and still seen in spain have their oriental prototypes and counterparts. they varied, of course, with the character of the district to be irrigated and the sources of supply. where rivers and running water gave the material, it was conveyed in canals; one main trunk-line or artery supplied the fluid to innumerable smaller watercourses or veins, the _acequias_, which formed a reticulated network of minute ramifications. the great difficulty in the plains, and this was especially the case about malaga, was to provide a proper fall, which was effected either by carrying the water to a higher level by an aqueduct, or sinking it below the surface in subterranean channels. where the water had to be raised from underground, the simple pole, on which worked an arm or lever with a bucket, was used, the identical "shadoof" of the nile; or the more elaborate water-wheel, the arab _anaoura_, a name still preserved in the spanish _noria_, one of which is figured in the almeria washing-place, where it serves the gossiping _lavanderas_ at their work. in these norias the motive power is usually that of a patient ox, which works a revolving wheel, and so turns a second at right angles armed with jars or buckets. these descend in turn, coming up charged with water, which falls over into a reservoir or pipe, whence it flows to do its business below. under this admirable system the land gives forth perpetual increases. it knows no repose. nothing lies fallow. "man is never weary of sowing, nor the sun of calling into life." crop succeeds crop with astonishing rapidity; three or four harvests of corn are reaped in the year, twelve or fifteen of clover and lucerne. all kinds of fruit abound; the margins of the watercourses blossom with flowers that would be prized in a hothouse, and the most marvelous fecundity prevails. by these means the moors of malaga, the most scientific and successful of gardeners, developed to the utmost the marvelously prolific soil. moorish writers described the pomegranates of malaga as red as rubies, and unequaled in the whole world. the _brevas_, or small green figs, were of exquisitely delicious flavor, and still merit that encomium. grapes were a drug in the markets, cheap as dirt; while the raisins into which they were converted, by a process that dates back to the phoenicians, found their way into the far east and were famous in palestine, arabia, and beyond. the vineyards of the malaga district, a wide tract embracing all the southern slopes towards the mediterranean, were, and still are, the chief source of its wealth. the wine of malaga could tempt even mohammedan moors to forget their prophet's prohibition; it was so delicious that a dying moor when commending his soul to god asked for only two blessings in paradise, enough to drink of the wines of malaga and seville. as the "mountains," this same wine was much drunk and appreciated by our forefathers. to this day "malaga" is largely consumed, both dry and sweet, especially that known as the lagrimas, or tears, a cognate term to the famous lachrymæ christi of naples, and which are the very essence of the rich ripe grapes, which are hung up in the sun till the juice flows from them in luscious drops. orange groves and lemon groves abound in the vega, and the fruit is largely exported. the collection and packing are done at points along the line of railway to which malaga is the maritime terminus, as at la pizarra, a small but important station which is the starting point for the baths of caratraca, and the mountain ride to ronda through the magnificent pass of el burgo. of late years malaga has become a species of market garden, in which large quantities of early vegetables are raised, the _primeurs_ of french gourmets, the young peas, potatoes, asparagus, and lettuce, which are sent north to paris during the winter months by express trains. this is probably a more profitable business than the raising of the sugar-cane, an industry introduced (or more exactly, revived, for it was known to and cultivated by the moors) in and around malaga by the well-known general concha, marques del duero. he spent the bulk of a large fortune in developing the cane cultivation, and almost ruined himself in this patriotic endeavor. others benefited largely by his well-meant enterprise, and the sugar fields of southern spain prospered until the german beet sugar drove the homegrown hard. the climate of malaga, with its great dryness and absolute immunity from frost, is exceedingly favorable to the growth of the sugar-cane, and the sugar fields at the time of the cutting are picturesque centers of activity. the best idea, however, of the amazing fertility of this gifted country will be obtained from a visit to one of the private residential estates, or _fincas_, such as that of la concepcion, where palms, bamboos, arums, cicads and other tropical plants thrive bravely in the open air. it is only a short drive, and is well worth a visit. the small grecian temple is full of roman remains, chiefly from cartama, the site of a great roman city which livy has described. some of these remains are of beautiful marble figures, which were found, like ordinary stones, built into a prison wall and rescued with some difficulty. the malaga authorities annexed them, thinking they contained gold, then threw them away as old rubbish. other remains at la concepcion are fragments of the roman municipal law, on bronze tablets, found at osuna, between antequera and seville. malaga possesses many mementoes of the moors besides their methods of irrigation. the great citadel which this truly militant race erected upon the chief point of vantage and key to the possession of malaga still remains. this, the castle of gibralfaro, the rock of the lighthouse, was built by a prince of granada, mohammed, upon the site of a phoenician fortress, and it was so strongly fortified and held that it long resisted the strenuous efforts of ferdinand and isabella in the memorable siege which prefaced the fall of granada. how disgracefully the catholic kings ill-treated the conquered moors of malaga, condemning them to slavery or the _auto da fé_, may be read in the pages of prescott. the towers of the gibralfaro still standing have each a story of its own: one was the atalaya, or watch-tower; on another, that of la vela, a great silver cross was erected when the city surrendered. below the gibralfaro, but connected with it and forming part of the four deep city walls, is the alcazaba, another fortification utilized by the moors, but the fortress they raised stands upon phoenician foundations. the quarter that lies below these moorish strongholds is the most ancient part of malaga, a wilderness of dark, winding alleys of oriental aspect, and no doubt of moorish origin. this is the home of the lower classes, of the turbulent masses who have in all ages been a trial and trouble to the authorities of the time. the malagueños, the inhabitants of malaga, whether moors or spaniards, have ever been rebellious subjects of their liege lords, and uncomfortable neighbors to one another. in all their commotions they have generally espoused the cause which has ultimately failed. [illustration] thus, in 1831, riego and torrijos having been in open revolt against the government, were lured into embarking for malaga from gibraltar, where they had assembled, by its military commandant moreno, and shot down to a man on the beach below the carmen convent. among the victims was an englishman, mr. boyd, whose unhappy fate led to sharp protests from england. since this massacre a tardy tribute has been raised to the memory of the slain; it stands in the shape of a monument in the plaza de riego, the alameda. again, malaga sided with espartero in 1843, when he "pronounced" but had to fly into exile. once more, in 1868, the malagueños took up arms upon the losing side, fighting for the dethroned isabella segunda against the successful soldiers who had driven her from madrid. malaga was long and obstinately defended, but eventually succumbed after a sanguinary struggle. last of all, after the abdication of amadeus in 1873, the republicans of malaga rose, and carried their excesses so far as to establish a communistic régime, which terrorized the town. the troops disbanded themselves, their weapons were seized by the worst elements of the population, who held the reins of power, the local authorities having taken to flight. the mob laid hands on the customhouse and all public moneys, levied contributions upon the more peaceable citizens, then quarreled among themselves and fought out their battles in the streets, sweeping them with artillery fire, and threatening a general bombardment. order was not easily restored or without the display of armed force, but the condign punishment of the more blameworthy has kept malaga quiet ever since. while the male sex among the masses of malaga enjoy an indifferent reputation, her daughters of all classes are famed for their attractiveness, even in spain, the home, _par excellence_, of a well-favored race. "muchachas malagueñas, muy halagueñas" (the girls of malaga are most bewitching) is a proverbial expression, the truth of which has been attested by many appreciative observers. théophile gautier's description of them is perhaps the most complimentary. the malagueña, he tells us, is remarkable for the even tone of her complexion (the cheek having no more color than the forehead), the rich crimson of her lips, the delicacy of her nostril, and above all the brilliancy of her arab eyes, which might be tinged with henna, they are so languorous and so almond-shaped. "i cannot tell whether or not it was the red draperies of their headgear, but their faces exhibited gravity combined with passion that was quite oriental in character." gautier drew this picture of the malagueñas as he saw them at a bull-fight, and he expresses a not unnatural surprise that sweet, madonna-like faces, which might well inspire the painter of sacred subjects, should look on unmoved at the ghastly episodes of the blood-stained ring. it shocked him to see the deep interest with which these pale beauties followed the fight, to hear the feats of the arena discussed by sweet lips that might speak more suitably of softer things. yet he found them simple, tender-hearted, good, and concluded that it was not cruelty of disposition but the custom of the country that drew them to this savage show. since then the bull-fight, shorn, however, of its worst horrors, has become acclimatized and most popular amidst m. gautier's own country-women in paris. that the beauty of the higher ranks rivals that of the lowest may be inferred from the fact that a lady whose charms were once celebrated throughout europe is of malagueñan descent. the mother of the empress eugénie, who shared with napoleon iii. the highest honors in france, was a malaga girl, a miss fitzpatrick, the daughter of the british consul, but she had also spanish blood in her veins. a near neighbor and old rival, as richly endowed, may again pass malaga in the great race for commercial expansion. this is almeria, which lies farther eastward and which owns many natural advantages; its exposed port has been improved by the construction of piers and breakwaters, and it now offers a secure haven to the shipping that should ere long be attracted in increasing tonnage to carry away the rich products of the neighboring districts. almeria is the capital of a province teeming with mineral wealth, and whose climate and soil favor the growth of the most varied and valuable crops. the silver mines of the mountains of murcia and the fertile valleys of the alpujarras would find their best outlet at almeria, while granada would once more serve as its farm. so ran the old proverb, "when almería was really almería, granada was only its alquería," or source of supply. what this time-honored but almost forgotten city most needs is to be brought into touch with the railway systems of spain. meanwhile, almeria, awaiting better fortune, thrives on the exports of its own products, chief among which are grapes and esparto. the first has a familiar sound to british ears, from the green grapes known as "almerias," which are largely consumed in british households. these are not equal to the delicately flavored muscatels, but they are stronger and will bear the packing and rough usages of exportation under which the others perish. esparto is a natural product of these favored lands, which, after long supplying local wants, has now become an esteemed item in their list of exports. it is known to botanists as the spanish rush, or bass feather grass, the genet d'espagne, and is compared by ford to the "spear grass which grows on the sandy sea-shores of lancashire." it is still manufactured, as in the days of pliny, into matting, baskets, ropes, and the soles for the celebrated alpargatas, or rope sandal shoes, worn universally by spanish peasants in the south and spanish soldiers on the line of march. the ease and speed with which the spanish infantry cover long distances are greatly attributed to their comfortable chaussures. nowadays a much wider outlet has been found for esparto grass, and it is grown artificially. when rags became more and more scarce and unequal to the demands of the paper-makers, experiments were made with various substitutes, and none answered the purpose better than the wild spear-grass of southern spain. almeria, while awaiting the return of maritime prosperity, can look with some complacency upon a memorable if not altogether glorious past. its very names, portus magnus under the romans, and al meriah, the "conspicuous," under the moors, attest its importance. all the agricultural produce of the prolific vega, the silks that were woven on moorish looms and highly prized through the east, were brought to almeria for transmission abroad. the security and convenience of this famous port gave it an evil reputation in after years, when it became an independent kingdom under ibn maymum. almeria was the terror of the mediterranean; its pirate galleys roved to and fro, making descents upon the french and italian coasts, and carrying back their booty, slaves, and prizes to their impregnable home. spaniards and genoese presently combined against the common enemy, and almeria was one of the earliest christian conquests regained from the moors. later still the algerian moors took fresh revenge, and their corsairs so constantly threatened almeria that charles v. repaired its ancient fortifications, the old moorish castle now called the alcazaba, the center or keep, and hung a great tocsin bell upon its cathedral tower to give notice of the pirates' approach. this cathedral is the most imposing object in the decayed and impoverished town. pigs and poultry roam at large in the streets, amidst dirt and refuse; but in the strong sunlight, white and blinding as in africa, the mean houses glisten brightly, and the abundant color seen on awnings and lattice, upon the women's skirts and kerchiefs, in the ultramarine sea, is brought out in the most vivid and beautiful relief. the scenery on the coast from malaga eastward is fine, in some parts and under certain aspects magnificent. beyond almeria is the famous cape de gatt, as it is known to our mariners, the cabo de gata of local parlance, the agate cape, to give it its precise meaning. this remarkable promontory, composed of rocks encrusted with gems, is worthy a place in the "arabian nights." there are miles and miles of agates and crystal spar, and in one particular spot amethysts are found. wild winds gather and constantly bluster about this richly constituted but often storm-tossed landmark. old sailor saws have perpetuated its character in the form of a proverb, "at the cape de gatt take care of your hat." other portions of the coast nearer malaga are still more forbidding and dangerous: under the sierra tejada, for example, where the rocky barriers which guard the land rise tier above tier as straight as a wall, in which there are no openings, no havens of safety for passing craft in an inshore gale. behind all, a dim outline joining hands as it were with the clouds, towers the great snowy range of southern spain, the sierra nevada, rejoicing in an elevation as high as the swiss alps, and in some respects far more beautiful. there are, however, no such grim glaciers, no such vast snow-fields as in switzerland, for here in the south the sun has more power, and even at these heights only the peaks and pinnacles wear white crests during the summer heats. this more genial temperature encourages a richer vegetation, and makes the ascents less perilous and toilsome. a member of the alpine club would laugh to scorn the conquest of muley hacen, or of the picacho de la veleta, the two crowning peaks of the range. the enterprise is within the compass of the most moderate effort. the ascent of the last-named and lowest, although the most picturesque, is the easiest made, because the road from granada is most direct. in both cases the greatest part of the climbing is performed on horseback; but this must be done a day in advance, and thus a night has to be passed near the summit under the stars. the temperature is low, and the travellers can only defend themselves against the cold by the wraps they have brought and the fuel they can find (mere knotted roots) around their windy shelter. the ascent to where the snow still lingers, in very dirty and disreputable patches, is usually commenced about two in the morning, so that the top may be reached before dawn. if the sky is clear, sunrise from the picacho is a scene that can never be forgotten, fairly competing with, if not outrivaling, the most famous views of the kind. the mediterranean lies below like a lake, bounded to the north and west by the spanish coast, to the south by the african, the faintest outlines of which may often be seen in the far, dim distance. eastward the horizon is made glorious by the bright pageants of the rising sun, whose majestic approach is heralded by rainbow-hued clouds. all around are the strangely jagged and contorted peaks, rolling down in diminishing grandeur to the lower peaks that seem to rise from the sea. the highest peak of the sierra nevada is muley hacen, although it has only the advantage over the picacho de la veleta by about a couple of hundred feet. it is a longer and more difficult ascent, but in some ways the most interesting, as it can best be reached through the alpujarras, those romantic and secluded valleys which are full of picturesque scenery and of historical associations. the starting point, as a general rule, is trevelez, although the ascent may be equally made from portugos, somewhat nearer granada. trevelez is the other side and the most convenient coming from malaga by way of motril. but no one would take the latter route who could travel by the former, which leads through alhendin, that well-known village which is said to have seen the last of the departing moors. this is the point at which granada is finally lost to view, and it was here that boabdil, the last king of granada, took his last farewell of the city whose loss he wept over, under the scathing sarcasm of his more heroic mother, who told him he might well "weep like a woman for what he could not defend as a man." near this village is the little hill still known as the site of "el ultimo suspiro del moro, the last sigh of the moor." this same road leads through lanjaron, an enchanting spot, posted high upon a spur of the hills, and famous as a bathing place with health-giving mineral springs. from portugos or trevelez the climb is easy enough: to be accomplished a great part of the way on horseback, and in its earlier levels ascending amid forests of evergreen oak; after that, long wastes of barren rock are passed, till at length the summit is reached, on a narrow strip of table-land, the highest in southern europe, and with an unrivaled view. the charm of the muley hacen peak is its isolation, while the picacho looks better from it than muley hacen does from the picacho, and there is a longer vista across the mediterranean sea. iv barcelona the flower market of the rambla--streets of the old town--the cathedral of barcelona--description of the columbus monument--all saints' day in spain--mont tibidaho--diverse centers of intellectual activity--ancient history--philanthropic and charitable institutions. "barcelona, shrine of courtesy, harbor of the wayfarer, shelter of the poor, cradle of the brave, champion of the outraged, nurse of friendship, unique in position, unique in beauty!" such was the eulogium bestowed upon barcelona by the great cervantes several hundred years ago, an eulogium warranted by a stranger's experience in our own day. the matchless site of the second city of spain, its luxuriant surroundings, awaken enthusiasm as of old, whilst even the briefest possible sojourn suffices to make us feel at home. a winning urbanity, a cosmopolitan amiableness, characterize the townsfolk, spanish hauteur is here replaced by french cordiality. softness of manner and graces of speech lend additional charm to a race conspicuous for personal beauty. the barcelonese are described by a contemporary as laborious and energetic, ambitious of social advance, tenacious of personal dignity, highly imaginative, at the same time eminently practical, steadfast in friendship, vehement in hate. the stir and magnificence of the city attest the progressive character of the inhabitants. few european capitals can boast of finer public monuments, few indeed possess such a promenade as its famous rambla. the rambla may be regarded as an epitome, not only of the entire city, but of all spain, and here the curious traveller should take up his quarters. a dozen brilliant or moving spectacles meet the eye in a day, whilst the normal aspect is one of unimaginable picturesqueness and variety. the dark-eyed flower-girls with their rich floral displays; the country folks still adhering to the costume of catalonia--the men sandaled and white-hosed, for headgear, slouch caps of crimson, scarlet, or peach-colored felt, the women with gorgeous silk kerchiefs pinned under the chin--the asturian nursemaids in poppy-red skirts barred with black, and dainty gold and lace caps; the ladies fanning themselves as they go in november, with black lace mantillas over their pretty heads; the guardia civile in big, awe-inspiring cocked hats and long black cloaks reaching to the ankle; the trim soldiery in black and red tunics, knickerbockers and buskins, their officers ablaze with gold braid and lace; the spick-and-span city police, each neat as a dandy in a melodrama, not a hair out of place, collars and cuffs of spotless white, ironed to perfection, well-fitting costumes, swords at their sides; the priests and nuns; the seafaring folk of many nationalities; the shepherds of uncouth appearance from the neighboring mountains--all these at first make us feel as if we were taking part in a masquerade. now way is made for the funeral train of some rich citizen, the lofty car of sumptuous display of black and gold drapery, wreaths of fresh roses, violet, and heliotrope, large as carriage-wheels, fastened to the sides, the coffin, encased in black and violet velvet, studded with gold nails; following slowly, a long procession of carriages bearing priests, choristers, and mourners. and now the sounds of martial music summon the newcomer a second time to his window. it is a soldier who is borne to his rest. six comrades accompany the bier, carrying long inverted tapers; behind march commanding officers and men, the band playing strains all too spirited it seems for such an occasion. there is always something going on in this splendid avenue animated from early morning till past midnight, market-place, parade ground, promenade in one. the daily flower-market of itself would almost repay the journey from london. when northern skies are gloomiest, and fogs are daily fare, the rambla is at its best. the yellowing leaves of the plane-trees look golden under the dazzling blue sky, and brilliant as in a picture are the flower-sellers and their wares. these distractingly pretty girls, with their dark locks pulled over the brow, their lovely eyes, rich olive complexions, and gleaming white teeth, have nothing of the mendicant about them. as they offer their flowers--perhaps fastening roses to a half-finished garland with one hand, whilst with the other a pot of heliotrope is reached down--the passer-by is engagingly invited to purchase. the spanish language, even the dialect of catalonia, is music to begin with, and the flower-maidens make it more musical still by their gentle, caressing ways. some wear little mantillas of black, blonde, or cashmere; others, silk kerchiefs of brightest hue--orange, crimson, deep purple, or fanciful patterns of many colors. barcelona is a flower-garden all the year round, and in mid-winter we stroll between piled-up masses of rose, carnation, and violet, to say nothing of dahlias and chrysanthemums. it is especially on all saints' and all souls' days that the flower-market of the rambla is seen to advantage; enormous sums are spent upon wreaths and garlands for the cemetery, the poorest then contriving to pay his floral tribute to departed kith and kin. in striking contrast with the wide, airy, ever brilliantly illuminated rambla, electric light doing duty for sunshine at night, are the streets of the old town. the stranger may take any turning--either to right or left--he is sure to find himself in one of these dusky narrow thoroughfares, so small ofttimes the space between window and opposite window that neighbors might almost shake hands. with their open shops of gay woolen stuffs, they vividly recall cairene bazaars. narrow as is the accommodation without, it must be narrower still within, since when folks move from one house to another their goods and chattels are hoisted up and passed through the front windows. the sight of a chest of drawers or a sofa in cloudland is comical enough, although the system certainly has its advantages. much manual labor is thereby spared, and the furniture doubtless escapes injury from knocking about. the wise traveller will elect to live on the rambla, but to spend his time in the old town. wherever he goes he is sure to come upon some piece of antiquity, whilst here, in a great measure, he loses sight of the cosmopolitan element characterizing the new quarters. novel and striking as is its aspect to the stranger, barcelona must nevertheless be described as the least spanish of spanish towns. the second seaport of spain is still--as it was in the middle ages--one of the most important seats of international commerce on the mediterranean. as we elbow our way along the crowded rambla we encounter a diversity of types and hear a perplexing jargon of many tongues. a few minutes suffice to transport us into the old-world city familiar to ford--not, however, to be described by the twentieth century tourist in ford's own words. "a difficult language," he wrote just upon half a century ago, "rude manners, and a distrust of strangers, render barcelona a disagreeable city." nowhere nowadays is more courtesy shown to the inquiring stranger. he is not even obliged to ask his way in these narrow tortuous streets. the city police, to be found at every turn, uninvited come to his aid, and, bringing out a pocket-map, with an infinity of pains make clear to him the route he has to take. the handsome calle san fernando leads to the somber but grandiose old cathedral with its lovely cloisters, magnificent towers and bells, deep-voiced as that of big ben itself. all churches in spain, by the way, must be visited in the forenoon; even then the light is so dim that little can be seen of their treasures--pictures, reliquaries, marble tombs. the cathedral of barcelona forms no exception to the rule. only lighted by windows of richly stained old glass, we are literally compelled to grope our way along the crowded aisles. mass is going on from early morning till noon, and in the glimmering jeweled light we can just discern the moving figures of priests and acolytes before the high altar, and the scattered worshippers kneeling on the floor. equally vague are the glimpses we obtain of the chapels, veritable little museums of rare and beautiful things unfortunately consigned to perpetual obscurity, veiled in never-fading twilight. what a change we find outside! the elegant gothic cloisters, rather to be described as a series of chapels, each differing from the other, each sumptuously adorned, enclose a sunny open space or patio, planted with palms, orange and lemon trees, the dazzlingly bright foliage and warm blue sky in striking contrast to the somber gray of the building-stone. a little farther off, on the other side, we may see the figures of the bell-ringers high up in the open belfry tower, swinging the huge bells backwards and forwards with tremendous effort, a sight never to be missed on sundays and fête days. this stately old cathedral, like so many others, was never finished and works of reparation and restoration are perpetually going on. close by stands the palais de justice, with its beautiful gothic court and carved stone staircase, the balustrade supported by lovely little statuettes or gargoyles, each an artistic study in itself. abutting this is the palais de diputacion, provincial or local parliament house, a building of truly spanish grandeur. its wide marble staircases, its elaborate ceilings of carved wood, its majestic proportions, will, perhaps, have less interest for some travellers than its art-treasures, two _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the gifted fortuny. barcelona was the patron of this true genius--catalan by birth--so unhappily cut off in his early prime. with no little pride the stately officials show these canvases--the famous "odalisque" and the "battle of tetuan"--the latter, alas! left unfinished. it is a superb piece of life and color, but must be seen on a brilliant day as the hall is somber. nothing can exceed the courtesy of the barcelonese to strangers, and these pictures are shown out of the regular hours. but let no one incautiously offer a fee. the proffered coin will be politely, even smilingly, rejected, without humiliating reproof, much less a look of affront. ford's remark that "a silver key at all times secures admission" does not hold good in these days. near the cathedral, law courts, and provincial parliament house stands another picturesque old palace of comparatively modern date, yet saracenic aspect, and containing one of the most curious historic treasures in europe. this is the palace of the kings of aragon, or archivo general de la corona de aragon. the exterior, as is usual with spanish buildings, is massive and gloomy. inside is a look of oriental lightness and gaiety. slender columns, painted red, enclose an open court, and support a little terrace planted with shrubs and flowers. here in perfect order and preservation, without a break, are stored the records of upwards of a thousand years, the earlier consisting of vellum scrolls and black letter, the latter showing the progress of printing from its beginning down to our own day. the first parchment bears date a. d. 875. among the curiosities of the collection are no less than eight hundred and two papal bulls from the year 1017 to 1796. besides the archives of barcelona itself, and of the kingdom of aragon, to which it was annexed in the twelfth century, the palace contains many deeply interesting manuscripts found in the suppressed monasteries. the archives have been ingeniously arranged by the learned keeper of records. the bookcases, which are not more than six feet high, stand on either side of the vast library, at some distance from the wall, made staircase-wise; one set of volumes just above the other, with the result that no accumulation of dust is possible, and that each set is equally accessible. the effect on the eye of these symmetrically-placed volumes in white vellum is very novel and pleasing. we seem to be in a hall, the walls of which are of fluted cream-colored marble. the little museum of local antiquities in the ruined church of santa agneda, the somber old churches of san pablo del campo, santa maria del mar and belen, the fragments of mediæval domestic architecture remaining here and there--all these will detain the archæologist. of more general interest are the modern monuments of barcelona. in no city have civic lavishness and public spirit shone forth more conspicuously. a penny tramway--you may go anywhere here for a penny--takes you to the beautiful park and fountain of neptune. the word "fountain" gives an inadequate notion of the splendid pile, with its vast triple-storied marble galleries, its sculptured naiads and dolphins, and on the summit, towering above park and lake and cascades, its three gigantic sea-horses and charioteers richly gilt, gleaming as if indeed of massive gold. is there any more sumptuous fountain in the world? i doubt it. in spite of the gilded sea-horses and chariot, there is no tawdriness here; all is bold, splendid, and imposing. below the vast terraced galleries and wide staircases, all of pure marble, flows in a broad sheet the crystal-clear water, home of myriads of gold fish. the _entourage_ is worthy of so superb a construction. the fountain stands in the midst of a scrupulously-kept, tastefully laid-out, ever-verdant park or public pleasure-ground. in november all is fresh and blooming as in an english june. palms, magnolias, bananas, oleanders, camellias, the pepper-tree, make up a rich, many-tinted foliage. flowers in winter-time are supplanted by beds of brilliant leaved plants that do duty for blossoms. the purple, crimson, and sea-green leaves are arranged with great effect, and have a brilliant appearance. here surrounded by gold green turf, are little lakes which may be sailed across in tiny pleasure skiffs. at the chief entrance, conspicuously placed, stands the fine equestrian monument to prim, inaugurated with much civil and military pomp some years ago. it is a bold statue in red bronze. the general sits his horse, hat in hand, his fine, soldier-like face turned towards the city. on the sides of the pedestal are bas-reliefs recording episodes of his career, and on the front these words only, "barcelona à prim." the work is that of a spanish artist, and the monument as a whole reflects great credit alike to local art and public spirit. but a few minutes' drive brings us within sight of a monument to one of the world's heroes. i allude to the memorial column recently raised to columbus by this same public-spirited and munificent city of barcelona. columbus, be it remembered, was received here by ferdinand and isabella after his discovery of america in 1493. far and wide over hills and city, palm-girt harbor, and sea, as a lighthouse towers the tremendous obelisk, the figure of the great genoese surmounting it, his feet placed on a golden sphere, his outstretched arm pointing triumphantly in the direction of his newly-discovered continent as much as to say, "it is there!" never did undertaking reflect more credit upon a city than this stupendous work. the entire height of the monument is about two-thirds of the height of the monument of london. the execution was entrusted to barcelonese craftsmen and artists; the materials--bronze, stone, and marble--all being supplied in the neighborhood. on the upper tier of the pedestal are statues of the four noble catalans who materially aided columbus in his expedition--by name fray boyl, monk of montserrat, pedro margarit, jaime ferrer, and luis sentangel. below are allegorical figures representing, in the form of stately matrons, the four kingdoms of catalonia, castille, aragon, and leon. bas-reliefs, illustrating scenes in the career of the discoverer, adorn the hexagonal sides, six magnificent winged lions of greystone keep jealous watch over the whole, and below these, softening the aspect of severity, is a belt of turf, the following inscription being perpetually written in flowers: "barcelona à colon." the column is surmounted by a globe burnished with gold, and above rises the colossal figure of columbus. no happier site could have been selected. the monument faces the sea, and is approached from the town by a palm-bordered walk and public garden. the first object to greet the mariner's eye as he sights land is the figure of columbus poised on his glittering ball; the last to fade from view is that beacon-like column towering so proudly above city and shore. a little excursion must be made by boat or steamer, in order to realize the striking effect of this monument from the sea. to obtain a bird's-eye view of barcelona itself, the stranger should go some distance inland. the fort of montjuich, commanding the town from the south, or mont tibidaho to the north, will equally answer his purpose. a pretty winding path leads from the shore to a pleasure-garden just below the fort, and here we see the entire city spread as in a map at our feet. the panorama is somewhat monotonous, the vast congeries of white walls and grey roofs only broken by gloomy old church towers and tall factory chimneys, but thus is realized for the first time the enormous extent of the spanish liverpool and manchester in one. thus, indeed, may barcelona be styled. looking seaward, the picture is animated and engaging--the wide harbor bristling with shipping, lateen-sailed fishing boats skimming the deep-blue sunny waves, noble vessels just discernible on the dim horizon. [illustration] the once celebrated promenade of the murallo del mar, eulogized by ford and other writers, no longer exists, but the stranger will keep the sea-line in search of the new cemetery. a very bad road leads thither, on all saints' and all souls' days followed by an unbroken string of vehicles, omnibuses, covered carts, hackney carriages, and private broughams; their occupants, for the most part, dressed in black. the women, wearing black cashmere mantillas, are hardly visible, being hidden by enormous wreaths, crosses, and bouquets of natural and also of artificial flowers. the new cemetery is well placed, being several miles from the city, on high ground between the open country and the sea. it is tastefully laid out in terraces--the trees and shrubs testifying to the care bestowed on them. here are many costly monuments--mausoleums, we should rather say--of opulent barcelonese, each family possessing its tiny chapel and burial-place. it is to be hoped that so progressive a city as barcelona will ere long adopt the system of cremation. nothing can be less hygienic, one would think, than the present mode of burial in spain. to die there is literally--not figuratively--to be laid on the shelf. the terrace-like sides of the cemetery ground have been hollowed out into pigeon-holes, and into these are thrust the coffins, the marble slab closing the aperture bearing a memorial inscription. ivy and other creepers are trained around the various divisions, and wreaths of fresh flowers and immortelles adorn them; the whole presenting the appearance of a huge chest of drawers divided into mathematically exact segments. to us there is something uncanny--nay, revolting--in such a form of burial; which, to say the least of it, cannot be warranted on æsthetic, much less scientific, principles. it is satisfactory to find that at last protestants and jews have their own burial-place here, shut off from the rest, it is true by a wall at least twenty feet high, but a resting-place for all that. it was not so very long ago that malaga was the only spanish town according protestants this privilege, the concession being wrung from the authorities by the late much-esteemed british consul, mr. mark. for some days preceding the festival of all saints the cemetery presents a busy scene. charwomen, gardeners, masons, and painters then take possession of the place. marble is scoured, lettering is repainted, shrubs clipped, turf cut--all is made spick and span, in time for the great festival of the dead. it must be borne in mind that all saints' day in spain has no analogy with the same date in our own calendar. brilliant sunshine, air soft and balmy as of july, characterize the month of november here. these visits to the cemetery are, therefore, less depressing than they would be performed amid english fog and drizzle. we northerners, moreover, cannot cast off gloomy thoughts and sad retrospection as easily as the more elastic, more joyous southern temperament. mass over, the pilgrimage to the cemetery paid, all is relaxation and gaiety. all saints' and all souls' days are indeed periods of unmitigated enjoyment and relaxation. public offices, museums, schools, shops, are closed. holiday folk pour in from the country. the city is as animated as paris on the 14th of july. in the forenoon it is difficult to elbow one's way through the crowded thoroughfares. every street is thronged, men flocking to mass as zealously as devotees of the other sex. in these early hours most of the ladies wear black; their mourning garb later in the day to be exchanged for fashionable toilettes of all colors. the children are decked out gaily, as for a fancy fair. service is being held in every church, and from all parts may be heard the sonorous cathedral bells. its vast, somber interior, now blazing with wax-lights, is a sight to remember. crowds in rapt devotion are kneeling on the bare stones, the ladies heedless of their silks; here and there the men kneeling on a glove or pocket-handkerchief, in order to protect their sunday pantaloons. rows of poor men--beggars, it would seem, tidied up for the occasion--sit in rows along the aisle, holding lighted tapers. the choir is filled with choristers, men and boys intoning the service so skilfully that they almost seem to sing. soon the crowds fall back, and a procession passes from choir to high altar--priests and dignitaries in their gorgeous robes, some of black, embroidered with crosses in gold, others of white and purple or yellow, the bishop coming last, his long violet train borne by a priest; all the time the well-trained voices of the choristers--sweet treble of the boys, tenor, and base--making up for lack of music. at last the long ceremony comes to an end, and the vast congregation pours out to enjoy the balmy air, the warm sunshine, visits, confectionery, and other distractions. such religious holidays should not be missed by the traveller, since they still stamp spain as the most catholic country in the world. even in bustling, cosmopolitan, progressive barcelona people seem to spend half their time in church. in the capital of catalonia, twentieth-century civilization and the mediæval spirit may still be called next-door neighbors. the airy boulevards and handsome villas of suburban algiers are not more strikingly contrasted with the ancient moorish streets than the new quarters of barcelona with the old. the rambla, its electric lights, its glittering shops, cafés, clubs, and theaters, recalls a parisian boulevard. in many of the tortuous, malodorous streets of the old town there is hardly room for a wheelbarrow to be drawn along; no sunbeam has ever penetrated the gloom. let us take a penny tramway from the rambla to the gloomy, grandiose old church of santa maria del mar. between the city and the sea rises the majestic monument to columbus, conspicuous as a lighthouse alike from land and sea. we follow a broad palm-bordered alley and pleasure garden beyond which are seen the noble harbor bristling with masts and the soft blue mediterranean. under the palms lounge idle crowds listening to a band, shading themselves as best they can from the burning sun of november! what a change when we leave the tramway and the airy, handsome precincts of the park, and plunge into the dark, narrow street behind the lonja palace. the somber picture is not without relief. round about the ancient façade of the church are cloth-shops, the gay wares hanging from each story, as if the shopmen made a display of all their wares. here were reds, yellows, greens of brightest hue, some of these woolen blankets, shawls, and garments of every description being gay to crudeness; grass green, scarlet, orange, sky-blue, dazzled the eye, but the general effect was picturesque and cheerful. the dingy little square looked ready for a festival. in reality, a funeral service was taking place in the church. if spanish interiors are always dark and depressing, what must they be when draped with black? no sooner does the door swing behind us here than daylight is shut out completely as on entering a mine; we are obliged to grope our way by the feeble rays of light penetrating the old stained glass of the clerestory. the lovely lancets of the aisles are hidden by huge black banners, the vast building being only lighted by a blaze of wax tapers here and there. sweet soft chanting of boys' voices, with a delicious organ accompaniment, was going on when i entered, soon to be exchanged for the unutterably monotonous and lugubrious intoning of black-robed choristers. they formed a procession and, chanting as they went, marched to a side altar before which a priest was performing mass. the host elevated, all marched back again, the dreary intoning now beginning afresh. it is impossible to convey any adequate notion of the dreariness of the service. if the spaniards understand how to enjoy to the uttermost what browning calls "the wild joy of living," they also know how to clothe death with all the terrors of mediæval superstition. it takes one's breath away, too, to calculate the cost of a funeral here, what with the priests accomplished in the mystic dance--so does a spanish writer designate the performance--the no less elaborate services of the choristers, the lighting up of the church, the display of funeral drapery. the expense, fortunately, can only be incurred once. these ancient churches--all somberness and gloom, yet on fête days ablaze with light and colors--symbolize the leading characteristics of spanish character. no sooner does the devotee rise from his knees than the southern passion for joy and animation asserts itself. religious exercise and revel, penitence and enjoyment, alternate one with the other; the more devout the first, all the more eagerly indulged in the last. on the sunday morning following the festival of all saints--the 4th of november--the splendid old cathedral was the scene of a veritable pageant. wax lights illuminated the vast interior from end to end, the brocades and satins of priestly robes blazed with gold embroidery, the rich adornments and treasure of altar and chapels could be seen in full splendor. before the grand music of the organ and the elevation, a long, very long, sermon had to be listened to, the enormous congregation for the most part standing; scattered groups here and there squatted on the stone piers, not a chair to be had anywhere, no one seeming to find the discourse too long. when at last the preacher did conclude, the white-robed choristers, men and boys, passed out of the choir, and formed a double line. then the bishop in solemn state descended from the high altar. he wore a crimson gown with long train borne by a priest, and on his head a violet cap, with pea-green tuft. the dresses of the attendant clergy were no less gorgeous and rich in texture, some of crimson with heavy gold trimmings, others of mauve, guinea-gold, peach color, or creamy white, several wearing fur caps. the procession made the round of the choir, then returned to the starting-point. as i sat behind the high altar on one of the high-backed wooden benches destined for the aged poor, two tiny chorister boys came up, both in white surplices, one with a pink, the other with sky-blue collar. here they chatted and laughed with their hands on the bell-rope, ready to signal the elevation. on a sudden the tittering ceased, the childish hands tugged at the rope, the tinkling of the bell was heard, and the multitude, as one man, fell on its knees, the organ meantime being played divinely. service over, the crowds emerged into the dazzling sunshine: pleasure parties, steamboat trips, visits, theaters, bull-fights occupied the rest of the day, the rambla presenting the appearance of a masquerade. an excursion northwards of the city is necessary, in order to see its charming, fast-increasing suburbs. many, as is the case with those of paris, passy, auteuil, belleville, and others, were formerly little towns, but are fast becoming part of barcelona itself. most musically named is gracia, approached by rail or tramway, where rich citizens have their orange and lemon gardens, their chateaux and villas, and where religious houses abound. in this delightful suburban retreat alone no less than six nunneries may be counted; somber prison-like buildings, with tiny barred windows, indicating the abode of cloistered nuns of ascetic orders. that of the order of st. domingo has been recently founded. the house looks precisely like a prison. here also are several congregations of the other sex--the missionaries of the sacred heart, the fathers of san filipe, and others. gracia may be called the hampstead of barcelona. hardly a house but possesses its garden. above the high walls trail gorgeous creepers and datura, whilst through the iron gates we obtain glimpses of dahlias in full splendor, roses red and white, and above these the glossy-leaved orange and lemon trees with their ripening fruit. the pleasantest suburb of barcelona is well worthy of its name. as sarria is approached, the scenery becomes more rural, and under the brilliant november sunshine reminds the traveller of the east, the square, white, low-roofed houses rising amid olive and palm trees. the aloes and prickly pears on the waste ground again and again recall algeria. here are vast stretches of vegetable gardens and vineyards supplying the city markets, and standing in their own grounds on sunny hill-sides, the quintas or country houses of rich citizens and grandees. from the little town of sarria--hardly as yet to be called suburban--a glorious view is obtained of city, port, and sea. the narrow dusty streets, with their close-shuttered houses, have a sleepy look; yet sarria possesses one of the largest cotton-mills in spain, several thousand hands being employed by one firm. the branch railway ends at sarria. here tourists and holiday-makers alight; the hardy pedestrian to reach the summit of mont tibidaho on foot--a matter of two hours or so--the less enterprising, to accept one of the covered cars awaiting excursionists outside the station. mont tibidaho is the favorite holiday ground of the citizens. even in november numerous pleasure parties are sure to be found here, and the large restaurants indicate the extent of summer patronage. on the breezy heights round about are the sumptuous mansions of nobles and merchant princes; whilst down below are numerous picturesque valleys, notably that of san cugat. the stranger fortunate enough to obtain admission will find himself in the kind of fairyland described by tennyson in his "haroun-al-raschid," owen meredith in "the siege of constantinople," or gayangos in his delightful translation of the "chronicles of al-makkari." marble courts, crystal fountains, magnificent baths, mosaic pavements, statuary, tapestries, aviaries, rare exotics, gold and silver plate, are now combined with all modern appliances of comfort. a sojourn in one of the well-appointed hotels will suffice to give some notion of spanish society. during the holidays many families from the city take up their quarters here. social gatherings, picnics, excursions, concerts, are the order of the day, and good military bands enliven the gardens on sundays. to the south-east of barcelona lies the suburb of barceloneta, frequented by the seafaring population. penny boats ply between city and suburb, on sundays and holidays the music of a barrel-organ being thrown into the bargain. the harbor is then black with spectators, and the boats and little steamers, making the cruise of the port for half a franc, are crowded with holiday-makers. the bright silk head-dresses of the women, the men's crimson or scarlet sombreros and plaids, the uniforms of the soldiers, the gay dresses of the ladies, make up a picturesque scene. on board the boats the music of the barrel-organ must on no account be paid for. a well-intentioned stranger who should offer the musician a penny is given to understand that the treat is gratuitous and generously supplied by the owners of the craft. greed being almost universal in those parts of the world frequented by tourists, it is gratifying to be able to chronicle such exceptions. seldom, indeed, has the sightseer at barcelona to put his hand in his pocket. if inferior to other spanish cities in picturesqueness and interest generally, the capital of catalonia atones for the deficit by its abundance of resources. it possesses nothing to be called a picture-gallery; the museums are second-rate, the collections of antiquities inconsiderable. but what other city in spain can boast of so many learned bodies and diverse centers of intellectual activity? excessive devotion and scientific inquiry do not here seem at variance. strange to say, a population that seems perpetually on its knees is the first to welcome modern ideas. the academy of arts was founded in 1751, and owes its origin to the junta, or tribunal of commerce of catalonia. this art school is splendidly lodged in the lonja palace, and attached to it is a museum, containing a few curious specimens of old spanish masters, some rather poor copies of the italian schools, and one real artistic treasure of the first water. this is a collection of studies in black and white by the gifted fortuny, whose first training was received here. the sketches are masterly, and atone for the insignificance of the remaining collection. students of both sexes are admitted to the classes, the course of study embracing painting in all its branches, modeling, etching, linear drawing and perspective, anatomy and æsthetics. it is gratifying to find that girls attend these classes, although as yet in small numbers. the movement in favor of the higher education of women marches at a snail's pace in spain. the vast number of convents and what are called "escuelas pias," or religious schools, attest the fact that even in the most cosmopolitan and enlightened spanish town the education of girls still remains chiefly in the hands of the nuns. lay schools and colleges exist, also a normal school for the training of female teachers, founded a few years ago. here and there we find rich families entrusting their girls to english governesses, but such cases are rare. we must remember, however, that besides the numerous "escuelas pias" and secular schools, several exist opened under the auspices of the spanish evangelical body, and also the league for the promotion of lay teaching. we need not infer, then, that because they do not attend the municipal schools the children go untaught. how reluctantly catholic countries are won over to educate their women we have witnessed in france. here in the twentieth century the chief occupation of an educated spanish lady seems to be that of counting her beads in church. music is universally taught, the cultivation of the piano being nowhere more assiduous. pianoforte teachers may be counted by the hundred; and a conservatorium, besides academies due to private initiative, offers a thorough musical training to the student. elegant pianos, characterized by great delicacy of tone and low price, are a leading feature of barcelona manufacture, notably of the firm bernareggi. the university, attended by two thousand five hundred students, was founded so long ago as 1430, and rebuilt in 1873. a technical school--the only complete school of arts and sciences existing in spain--was opened under the same roof in 1850; and, in connection with it, night classes are held. any workman provided with a certificate of good conduct can attend these classes free of cost. schools of architecture and navigation are also attached to the university. thirst after knowledge characterizes all classes of the community. a workman's literary club, or athenæum, founded a few years back, is now a flourishing institution, aided by municipal funds. no kind of recreation is allowed within its walls. night-schools opened here are attended by several hundred scholars. barcelona also boasts of an academy of _belles lettres_, the first founded in spain; schools of natural science, chemistry, agriculture, of medicine and surgery, of jurisprudence, an academy devoted to the culture of the catalonian language, and containing library and museum. this society has greatly contributed to the protection of ancient buildings throughout the province, besides amassing valuable treasure, legend, botanical and geological specimens and antiquities. the archæological society of barcelona has also effected good work: to its initiative the city is mainly indebted for the charming little collection of antiquities known as the "museo provincial," before alluded to. in places of public entertainment barcelona is unusually rich. its opera house, holding four thousand spectators, equals in spaciousness the celebrated house of moscow. the unpretentious exterior gives no idea of the splendor within. a dozen theaters may be counted besides. bull-fights, alas! still disgrace the most advanced city of the peninsula. the bull-ring was founded in 1834, and the brutal spectacle still attracts enormous crowds, chiefly consisting of natives. the bull-fight is almost unanimously repudiated by foreign residents of all ranks. a few words must now be said about the history of this ancient place. the city founded here by hamilcar barco, father of the great hannibal, is supposed to stand on the site of one more ancient still, existing long before the foundation of rome. the carthaginian city in 206 b. c. became a roman colonia, under the title of "faventia julia augusta pia barzino," which was eclipsed in importance, however, by tarragona, the roman capital. in 409 a. d. it was taken by the goths, and under their domination increased in size and influence, coining its own money stamped with the legend "barcinona." on the destruction of tarragona by the moors barcelona capitulated, was treated with clemency, and again became a metropolis. after many vicissitudes it was ruled in the ninth century by a christian chief of its own, whose descendants till the twelfth governed it under the title of counts of barcelona, later assuming that of kings of aragon, to which kingdom the province was annexed. during the middle ages barcelona played a foremost part in the history of commerce. in the words of ford, "like carthage of old, it was the lord and terror of the mediterranean. it divided with italy the enriching commerce of the east. it was then a city of commerce, conquest, and courtiers, of taste, learning, and luxury--the athens of the troubadour." its celebrated commercial code, framed in the thirteenth century, obtained acceptance throughout europe. here one of the first printing-presses in spain was set up, and here columbus was received by ferdinand and isabella after his discovery of a new world. a hundred years later a ship was launched from the port, made to move by means of steam. the story of barcelona is henceforth but a catalogue of tyrannies and treacheries, against which the brave, albeit turbulent, city struggled single-handed. in 1711 it was bombarded and partly ruined by philip v.; a few years later, after a magnanimous defense, it was stormed by berwick, on behalf of louis xiv., and given up to pillage, outrage, fire, and sword. napoleon's fraudulent seizure of barcelona is one of the most shameful pages of his shameful history. the first city--the key of spain, as he called it--only to be taken in fair war by eighty thousand men, was basely entrapped, and remained in the hands of the french till the treaty of paris in 1814. from that time barcelona has only enjoyed fitful intervals of repose. in 1827 a popular rising took place in favor of don carlos. in 1834 queen christina was opposed, and in 1840 public opinion declared for espartero. in 1856 and 1874 insurrections occurred, not without bloodshed. barcelona is a great gathering-place of merchants from all parts of europe. in its handsome hotels is heard a very babel of tongues. the principal manufactures consist of woolen stuffs--said to be inferior to english in quality--silk, lace, firearms, hats, hardware, pianos; the last, as has been already stated, of excellent quality, and low in price. porcelain, crystal, furniture, and inlaid work, must be included in this list, also ironwork and stone blocks. beautifully situated on the mediterranean between the mouths of two rivers,--the llobregat and the besos--and possessing one of the finest climates in the world, barcelona is doubtless destined ere long to rival algiers as a health resort. three lines of railway now connect it directly with paris, from which it is separated by twenty-eight hours' journey. the traveller may leave barcelona at five o'clock in the morning and reach lyons at midnight with only a change of carriages on the frontier. the route _viâ_ bordeaux is equally expeditious; that by way of clermont-ferrand less so, but more picturesque. hotels in the capital of catalonia leave nothing to desire on the score of management, hygiene, comfort, and prices strictly regulated by tariff. the only drawback to be complained of is the total absence of the feminine element--not a woman to be seen on the premises. good family hotels, provided with lady clerks and chambermaids, is a decided desideratum. the traveller wishing to attain a knowledge of the spanish language, and see something of spanish life and manners, may betake himself to one of the numerous boarding-houses. barcelona is very rich in philanthropic and charitable institutions. foremost of these is its hospital of santa cruz, numbering six hundred beds. it is under the conjoint management of sisters and brothers of charity and lay nurses of both sexes. an asylum for the insane forms part of the building, with annexes for the convalescent. the hospital del sagrado corazon, founded by public subscription in 1870 for surgical cases, also speaks volumes for the munificence of the citizens. the only passport required of the patient is poverty. one interesting feature about this hospital is that the committee of management consists of ladies. the nursing staff is formed of french sisters of st. vincent de paul. besides these must be named the orphanage for upwards of two thousand children of both sexes--casa de caridad de la provincia de barcelona--asylums for abandoned infants, for the orphaned children of seamen, maternity hospitals, crêches, etc. there is also a school for the blind and deaf mutes, the first of the kind established in spain. here the blind of both sexes receive a thorough musical training, and deaf mutes are taught according to the system known as lip-speech. all teaching is gratuitous. barcelona possesses thirty-eight churches, without counting the chapels attached to convents, and a vast number of conventual houses. several evangelical services are held on sundays both in the city and in the suburb of barceloneta. the protestant communities of spain, england, france, germany, sweden, and other countries, have here their representative and organization. sunday-schools and night-schools for adults are held in connection with these churches. the protestant body seems active. we find here a branch depôt of the religious tract society; various religious magazines, many of them translations from the english and german, are published. among these are the "revista christiana," intended for the more thoughtful class of readers; "la luz," organ of the reformed church of spain; and several illustrated periodicals for children. will protestantism ever take deep root in the home of the inquisition? time will show. that very advanced political opinions should be held here need hardly surprise us. we find the following democratic clubs in existence: the historic republican club ("centro republicano historico"), the possibilist republican club ("circulo republicano possibilista"), the democratic progressist club, the federal republican club, and many others. when next a great popular movement takes place in spain--and already the event looms in the distance--without doubt the first impulse will be given at barcelona. electric lighting was early introduced here, a company being founded so long back as 1880, and having branches in the capital, seville, valencia, bilbao, and other towns. the importance of barcelona as a center of commerce is attested by the extraordinary number of banks. at every turn the stranger comes upon a bank. "compared to the mighty hives of english industry and skill, here everything is petty," wrote ford, fifty years ago. very different would be his verdict could he revisit the manchester and liverpool of catalonia in our own day. one curious feature of social life in spain is the extraordinary number of religious fête days and public holidays. no bank holiday act is needed, as in the neighboring country of france. here is a list of days during which business is for the most part suspended in this recreation-loving city: twelfth-cake day is the great festival of the little ones--carnival is kept up, if with less of former splendor, nevertheless with much spirit; on ash wednesday rich and poor betake themselves to the country; holy thursday and good friday are celebrated with great pomp in the churches; on easter eve takes place a procession of shepherds in the park; easter monday is a day given up to rural festivity; the 19th of march st. josé's day--is a universal fête, hardly a family in spain without a josé among its number. the first sunday in may is a feast of flowers and poetic competitions; the days consecrated to st. juan and st. pedro are public holidays, patronized by enormous numbers of country-folks; all saints' and all souls' days are given up, as we have seen, to alternate devotion and festivity. on the 20th of december is celebrated the feast of the nativity, the fair and the displays of the shops attracting strangers from all parts. but it is especially the days sacred to the virgin that are celebrated by all classes. balls, banquets, processions, miracle-plays, illuminations, bull-fights, horse-races, scholastic fêtes, industrial exhibitions, civic ceremonial, besides solemn services, occupy old and young, rich and poor. feasting is the order of the day, and the confectioners' windows are wonderful to behold. although many local customs are dying out, we may still see some of the curious street sights described by ford fifty years ago, and the mariolatry he deplored is still as active as ever. the goodly show of dainties in the shops, however, belie his somewhat acrimonious description of a spanish reception. "those who receive," he wrote, "provide very little refreshment unless they wish to be covered with glory; space, light, and a little bad music, are sufficient to amuse these merry, easily-pleased souls, and satisfy their frugal bodies. to those who, by hospitality and entertainment, can only understand eating and drinking--food for man and beast--such hungry proceedings will be more honored in the breach than in the observance; but these matters depend much on latitude and longitude." be this as it may, either the climate of barcelona has changed, or international communication has revolutionized spanish digestion. thirty years ago, when travelling in spain, it was no unusual sight to see a spare, aristocratic hidalgo enter a restaurant, and, with much form and ceremony, breakfast off a tiny omelette. nowadays we find plenty of spanish guests at public ordinaries doing ample justice to a plentiful board. english visitors in a spanish house will not only get good music, in addition to space and light, but abundant hospitality of material sort. the spain of which ford wrote so humorously, and, it must be admitted, often so maliciously, is undergoing slow, but sure, transformation. many national characteristics remain--the passion for the brutal bull-fight still disgraces a polished people, the women still spend the greater portion of their lives in church, religious intolerance at the beginning of the twentieth century must be laid to the charge of a slowly progressive nation. on the other hand, and nowhere is the fact more patent than at barcelona, the great intellectual and social revolution, described by contemporary spanish novelists, is bringing the peninsula in closer sympathy with her neighbors. many young spaniards, _for_ instance, are now educated in england, english is freely spoken at malaga, and its literature is no longer unknown to spanish readers. these facts indicate coming change. the exclusiveness which has hitherto barred the progress of this richly-dowed and attractive country is on the wane. who shall say? we may ere long see dark-eyed students from barcelona at girton college, and a spanish society for the protection of animals prohibiting the torture of bulls and horses for the public pleasure. already--all honor to her name--a spanish woman novelist, the gifted caballero, has made pathetic appeals to her country-folks for a gentler treatment of animals in general. for the most part, it must be sadly confessed, in vain! in spite of its foremost position, in intellectual and commercial pre-eminence, barcelona has produced no famous men. her noblest monument is raised to an alien; lopez, a munificent citizen, honored by a statue, was born at santander. prim, although a catalan, did not first see the light in the capital. by some strange concatenation of events, this noble city owes her fame rather to the collective genius and spirit of her children than to any one. a magnanimous stepmother, she has adopted those identified with her splendor to whom she did not herself give birth. balzac wittily remarks that the dinner is the barometer of the family purse in paris. one perceives whether parisians are flourishing or no by a glance at the daily board. clothes afford a nice indication of temperature all the world over. we have only to notice what people wear, and we can construct a weather-chart for ourselves. although the late autumn was, on the whole, favorable, i left fires, furs, and overcoats in paris. at lyons, a city afflicted with a climate the proper epithet of which is "muggy," ladies had not yet discarded their summer clothes, and were only just beginning to refurbish felt hats and fur-lined pelisses. at montpellier the weather was april-like--mild, blowy, showery; waterproofs, goloshes, and umbrellas were the order of the day. on reaching barcelona i found a blazing sun, windows thrown wide open, and everybody wearing the lightest garments. such facts do duty for a thermometer. boasting, as it does of one of the finest climates in the world, natural position of rare beauty, a genial, cosmopolitan, and strikingly handsome population, and lastly, accessibility, barcelona should undoubtedly be a health resort hardly second to algiers. why it is not, i will undertake to explain. in the first place, there is something that invalids and valetudinarians require more imperatively than a perfect climate. they cannot do without the ministrations of women. to the suffering, the depressed, the nervous, feminine influence is ofttimes of more soothing--nay, healing--power than any medical prescription. let none take the flattering unction to their souls--as well look for a woman in a bashaw's army, or on a man-of-war, as in the palatial, well-appointed, otherwise irreproachable hotels of barcelona! they boast of marble floors, baths that would not have dissatisfied a roman epicure, salons luxurious as those of a west-end club, newspapers in a score of languages, a phalanx of gentlemanly waiters, a varied ordinary, delicious wines, but not a daughter of eve, old or young, handsome or ugly--if, indeed, there exists an ugly woman in barcelona--to be caught sight of anywhere! no charming landlady, as in french hotels, taking friendliest interest in her guests, no housemaids, willing and nimble as the marys and janes we have left at home, not even a rough, kindly, garrulous charwoman scrubbing the floors. the fashionable hotel here is a vast barrack conducted on strictly impersonal principles. visitors obtain their money's worth, and pay their bills. there the transaction between innkeeper and traveller ends. good family hotels or "pensions," in which invalids would find a home-like element, are sadly needed in this engaging, highly-favored city. the next desideratum is a fast train from port bou--the first spanish town on the frontier. an express on the spanish line would shorten the journey to lyons by several hours. new carriages are needed as much as new iron roads. many an english third-class is cleaner and more comfortable than the so-called "first" here. it must be added that the officials are all politeness and attention, and that beyond slowness and shabbiness the traveller has nothing to complain of. exquisite urbanity is still a characteristic of the barcelonese as it was in the age of cervantes. one exception will be mentioned farther on. if there are no women within the hotel walls--except, of course, stray lady tourists--heaven be praised, there are enough, and to spare, of most bewitching kind without. piquancy is, perhaps, the foremost charm of a spanish beauty, whether a high-born señora in her brougham, or a flower-girl at her stall. one and all seem born to turn the heads of the other sex, after the fashion of carmen in merimée's story. nor is outward attraction confined to women. the city police, cab-drivers, tramway-conductors, all possess what schopenhauer calls the best possible letter of introduction, namely, good looks. the number of the police surprise us. these bustling, brilliant streets, with their cosmopolitan crowds, seem the quietest, most orderly in the world. it seems hard to believe that this tranquillity and contentment should be fallacious--on the surface only. yet such is the case, as shown by the recent outbreak of rioting and bloodshed. "i have seen revolution after revolution," said to me a spanish gentleman of high position, an hidalgo of the old school; "i expect to see more if my life is sufficiently prolonged. spain has no government; each in power seeks but self-aggrandizement. our army is full of boulangers, each ready to usurp power for his own ends. you suggest a change of dynasty? we could not hope to be thereby the gainers. a republic, say you? that also has proved a failure with us. ah, you english are happy; you do not need to change abruptly the existing order of things, you effect revolutions more calmly." i observed that perhaps national character and temperament had something to do with the matter. he replied very sadly, "you are right; we southerners are more impetuous, of fiercer temper. whichever way i look, i see no hope for unhappy spain." such somber reflections are difficult to realize by the passing traveller. yet, when we consider the tremendous force of such a city as barcelona, its progressive tendencies, its spirit of scientific inquiry, we can but admit that an ultramontane regency and reactionary government must be out of harmony with the tendencies of modern spain. there is only one occupation which seems to have a deteriorating effect upon the spanish temper. the atmosphere of the post-office, at any rate, makes a catalan rasping as an east wind, acrimonious as a sloe-berry. i had been advised to provide myself with a passport before revisiting spain, but i refused to do so on principle. what business have we with this relic of barbarism at the beginning of the twentieth century, in times of peace among a friendly people? the taking a passport under such circumstances seemed to me as much of an anachronism as the wearing of a scapular, or seeking the royal touch for scrofula. by pure accident, a registered letter containing bank notes was addressed to me at the poste restante. never was such a storm in a teacup, such groaning of the mountain before the creeping forth of a tiny mouse! the delivery of registered letters in spain is accompanied with as much form as a marriage contract in france. let future travellers in expectation of such documents provide themselves, not only with a passport, but a copy of their baptismal register, of the marriage certificate of their parents, the family bible--no matter its size--and any other proofs of identity they can lay hands upon. they will find none superfluous. v marseilles its greek founders and early history--superb view from the sea--the cannebière--the parado and chemin de la corniche--château d'if and monte-cristo--influence of the greeks in marseilles--ravages by plague and pestilence--treasures of the palais des arts--the chapel of notre dame de la garde--the new marseilles and its future. about six hundred years before the birth of christ, when the mediterranean, ringed round with a long series of commercial colonies, was first beginning to transform itself with marvelous rapidity into "a greek lake," a body of adventurous hellenic mariners--young columbuses of their day--full of life and vigor, sailed forth from phocæa in asia minor, and steered their course, by devious routes, to what was then the far west, in search of a fitting and unoccupied place in which to found a new trading city. hard pressed by the persians on their native shore, these free young greeks--the pilgrim fathers of modern marseilles--left behind for ever the city of their birth, and struck for liberty in some distant land, where no cyrus or xerxes could ever molest them. sailing away past greece and sicily, and round messina into the almost unknown tyrrhenian sea, the adventurous voyagers arrived at last, after various false starts in corsica and elsewhere, at some gaunt white hills of the gaulish coast, and cast anchor finally in a small but almost land-locked harbor, under the shelter of some barren limestone mountains. whether they found a phoenician colony already established on the spot or not, matters as little to history nowadays as whether their leaders' names were really simos and protis or quite otherwise. what does matter is the indubitable fact that massalia, as its greek founders called it, preserved through all its early history the impress of a truly hellenic city; and that even to this moment much good greek blood flows, without question, in the hot veins of all its genuine native-born citizens. the city thus founded has had a long, a glorious, and an eventful history. marseilles is to-day the capital of the mediterranean, the true commercial metropolis of that inland sea which now once more has become a single organic whole, after its long division by the mohammedan conquest of north africa and the levant into two distinct and hostile portions. naples, it is true, has a larger population; but then, a population of neapolitan lazzaroni, mere human drones lounging about their hive and basking in the sunlight, does not count for much, except for the macaroni trade. what venice once was, that marseilles is to-day; the chief gate of mediterranean traffic, the main mart of merchants who go down in ships on the inland sea. in the cannebière and the old port, she possesses, indeed, as edmond about once graphically phrased it, "an open door upon the mediterranean and the whole world." the steamers and sailing vessels that line her quays bind together the entire mediterranean coast into a single organic commercial whole. here is the packet for barcelona and malaga; there, the one for naples, malta, and constantinople. by this huge liner, sunning herself at la joliette, we can go to athens and alexandria; by that, to algiers, cagliari, and tunis. nay, the suez canal has extended her bounds beyond the inland sea to the indian ocean; and the pillars of hercules no longer restrain her from free use of the great atlantic water-way. you may take ship, if you will, from the quai de la fraternité for bombay or yokohama, for rio or buenos ayres, for santa cruz, teneriffe, singapore, or melbourne. and this wide extension of her commercial importance marseilles owes, mainly no doubt, to her exceptional advantages of natural position, but largely also, i venture to think, to the hellenic enterprise of her acute and vigorous græco-gaulish population. and what a marvelous history has she not behind her! first of all, no doubt, a small fishing and trading station of prehistoric gaulish or ligurian villagers occupied the site where now the magnificent façade of the bourse commemorates the names of massalia's greatest phocæan navigators. then the phoenicians supervened upon the changeful scene, and built those antique columns and forgotten shrines whose scanty remains were recently unearthed in the excavations for making the rue de la république. next came the early phocæan colonists, reinforced a little later by the whole strength of their unconquerable townsmen, who sailed away in a body, according to the well-known legend preserved in herodotus, when they could no longer hold out against the besieging persian. the greek town became as it were a sort of early calcutta for the gaulish trade, with its own outlying colonies at nice, antibes, and hyères, and its inland "factories" (to use the old familiar anglo-indian word) at tarascon, avignon, and many other ancient towns of the rhône valley. her admirals sailed on every known sea: euthymenes explored the coasts of africa as far as senegal; pytheas followed the european shore past britain and ireland to the north of the shetlands. till the roman arrived upon the gaulish coast with his dreaded short-sword, massalia, in short, remained undisputed queen of all the western mediterranean waters. before the wolf of the capitol, however, all stars paled. yet even under the roman empire massilia (as the new conquerors called the name, with a mere change of vowel) retained her greek speech and manners, which she hardly lost (if we may believe stray hints in later historians) till the very eve of the barbarian invasion. with the period of the crusades, the city of euthymenes became once more great and free, and hardly lost her independence completely up to the age of louis xiv. it was only after the french revolution, however, that she began really to supersede venice as the true capital of the mediterranean. the decline of the turkish power, the growth of trade with alexandria and the levant, the final crushing of the barbary pirates, the conquest of algeria, and, last of all, the opening of the suez canal--a french work--all helped to increase her commerce and population by gigantic strides in half a dozen decades. at the present day marseilles is the chief maritime town of france, and the acknowledged center of mediterranean travel and traffic. the right way for the stranger to enter marseilles is, therefore, by sea, the old-established high road of her antique commerce. the old port and the cannebière are her front door, while the railway from paris leads you in at best, as it were, through shabby corridors, by a side entry. seen from the sea, indeed, marseilles is superb. i hardly know whether the whole mediterranean has any finer approach to a great town to display before the eyes of the artistic traveller. all round the city rises a semicircle of arid white hills, barren and bare indeed to look upon; but lighted up by the blue provençal sky with a wonderful flood of borrowed radiance, bringing out every jutting peak and crag through the clear dry air in distinct perspective. their sides are dotted with small square white houses, the famous _bastides_ or country boxes of the good marseillais bourgeois. in front, a group of sunlit rocky isles juts out from the bay, on one of which tower the picturesque bastions of the chateau d'if, so familiar to the reader of "monte-cristo." the foreground is occupied by the town itself, with its forest of masts, and the new dome of its checkered and gaudy byzantine cathedral, which has quite supplanted the old cathedral of st. lazare, of which only a few traces remain. in the middle distance the famous old pilgrimage chapel of notre dame de la garde crowns the summit of a pyramidal hill, with its picturesque mass of confused architecture. away to right and left, those endless white hills gleam on with almost wearying brightness in the sun for miles together; but full in front, where the eye rests longest, the bustle and commotion of a great trading town teem with varied life upon the quays and landing-places. if you are lucky enough to enter marseilles for the first time by the old port, you find yourself at once in the very thick of all that is most characteristic and vivid and local in the busy city. that little oblong basin, shut in on its outer side by projecting hills, was indeed the making of the great town. of course the old port is now utterly insufficient for the modern wants of a first-class harbor; yet it still survives, not only as a historical relic but as a living reality, thronged even to-day with the crowded ships of all nations. on the quay you may see the entire varied mediterranean world in congress assembled. here greeks from athens and levantines from smyrna jostle cheek by jowl with italians from genoa and arabs or moors from tangier or tunis. all costumes and all manners are admissible. the crowd is always excited, and always animated. a babel of tongues greets your ears as you land, in which the true marseillais dialect of the provençal holds the chief place--a graceful language, wherein the predominant latin element has not even yet wholly got rid of certain underlying traces of hellenic origin. bright color, din, life, movement: in a moment the traveller from a northern climate recognizes the patent fact that he has reached a new world--that vivid, impetuous, eager southern world, which has its center to-day on the provençal seaboard. [illustration] go a yard or two farther into the crowded cannebière, and the difference between this and the chilly north will at each step be forced even more strikingly upon you. that famous thoroughfare is firmly believed by every good son of old marseilles to be, in the familiar local phrase, "la plus belle rue de l'univers." my own acquaintance with the precincts of the universe being somewhat limited (i have never travelled myself, indeed, beyond the narrow bounds of our own solar system), i should be loth to endorse too literally and unreservedly this sweeping commendation of the marseillais mind; but as regards our modest little planet at least, i certainly know no other street within my own experience (save broadway, new york) that has quite so much life and variety in it as the cannebière. it is not long, to be sure, but it is broad and airy, and from morning till night its spacious _trottoirs_ are continually crowded by such a surging throng of cosmopolitan humanity as you will hardly find elsewhere on this side of alexandria. for cosmopolitanism is the true key-note of marseilles, and the cannebière is a road that leads in one direction straight to paris, but opens in the other direction full upon algiers and italy, upon egypt and india. what a picture it offers, too, of human life, that noisy cannebière! by day or by night it is equally attractive. on it centers all that is alive in marseilles--big hotels, glittering cafés, luxurious shops, scurrying drays, high-stepping carriage-horses, and fashionably-dressed humanity; an endless crowd, many of them hatless and bonnetless in true southern fashion, parade without ceasing its ringing pavements. at the end of all, the old port closes the view with its serried masts, and tells you the wherefore of this mixed society. the cannebière, in short, is the rue de rivoli of the mediterranean, the main thoroughfare of all those teeming shores of oil and wine, where culture still lingers by its ancient cradle. close to the quai, and at the entrance of the cannebière, stands the central point of business in new marseilles, the bourse, where the filial piety of the modern phocæans has done ample homage to the sacred memory of their ancient hellenic ancestors. for in the place of honor on the façade of that great palace of commerce the chief post has been given, as was due, to the statues of the old massaliote admirals, pytheas and euthymenes. it is this constant consciousness of historical continuity that adds so much interest to mediterranean towns. one feels as one stands before those two stone figures in the crowded cannebière, that after all humanity is one, and that the phocæans themselves are still, in the persons of their sons, among us. the cannebière runs nearly east and west, and is of no great length, under its own name at least; but under the transparent alias of the rue de noailles it continues on in a straight line till it widens out at last into the allées de meilhan, the favorite haunt of all the gossips and quidnuncs of marseilles. the allées de meilhan, indeed, form the _beau idéal_ of the formal and fashionable french promenade. broad avenues of plane trees cast a mellow shade over its well-kept walks, and the neatest of nurses in marvelous caps and long silk streamers dandle the laciest and fluffiest of babies, in exquisite costumes, with ostentatious care, upon their bountiful laps. the stone seats on either side buzz with the latest news of the town; the zouave flirts serenely with the bonnetless shop-girls; the sergeant-de-ville stalks proudly down the midst, and barely deigns to notice such human weaknesses. these allées are the favorite haunt of all idle marseilles, below the rank of "carriage company," and it is probable that satan finds as much mischief still for its hands to do here as in any other part of that easy-going city. at right angles to the main central artery thus constituted by the cannebière, the rue de noailles, and the allées de meilhan runs the second chief stream of marseillais life, down a channel which begins as the rue d'aix and the cours belzunce, and ends, after various intermediate disguises, as the rue de rome and the prado. just where it crosses the current of the cannebière, this polyonymous street rejoices in the title of the cours st. louis. close by is the place where the flower-women sit perched up quaintly in their funny little pulpits, whence they hand down great bunches of fresh dewy violets or pinky-white rosebuds, with persuasive eloquence to the obdurate passer-by. this flower-market is one of the sights of marseilles, and i know no other anywhere--not even at nice--so picturesque or so old-world. it keeps up something of the true provençal flavor, and reminds one that here, in this greek colony, we are still in the midst of the land of roses and of good king rené, the land of troubadours, and gold and flowers, and that it is the land of sun and summer sunshine. as the rue de rome emerges from the town and gains the suburb, it clothes itself in overhanging shade of plane-trees, and becomes known forthwith as the prado--that famous prado, more sacred to the loves and joys of the marseillais than the champs elysées are to the born parisian. for the prado is the afternoon-drive of marseilles, the rotten row of local equestrianism, the rallying-place and lounge of all that is fashionable in the phocæan city as the allées de meilhan are of all that is bourgeois or frankly popular. of course the prado does not differ much from all other promenades of its sort in france: the upper-crust of the world has grown painfully tame and monotonous everywhere within the last twenty-five years: all flavor and savor of national costume or national manners has died out of it in the lump, and left us only in provincial centers the insipid graces of london and paris, badly imitated. still, the prado is undoubtedly lively; a broad avenue bordered with magnificent villas of the meretricious haussmannesque order of architecture; and it possesses a certain great advantage over every other similar promenade i know of in the world--it ends at last in one of the most beautiful and picturesque sea-drives in all europe. this sea-drive has been christened by the marseillais, with pardonable pride, the chemin de la corniche, in humble imitation of that other great corniche road which winds its tortuous way by long, slow gradients over the ramping heights of the turbia between nice and mentone. and a "ledge road" it is in good earnest, carved like a shelf out of the solid limestone. when i first knew marseilles there was no corniche: the prado, a long flat drive through a marshy plain, ended then abruptly on the sea-front; and the hardy pedestrian who wished to return to town by way of the cliffs had to clamber along a doubtful and rocky path, always difficult, often dangerous, and much obstructed by the attentions of the prowling _douanier_, ever ready to arrest him as a suspected smuggler. nowadays, however, all that is changed. the french engineers--always famous for their roads--have hewn a broad and handsome carriage-drive out of the rugged rock, here hanging on a shelf sheer above the sea; there supported from below by heavy buttresses of excellent masonwork; and have given the marseillais one of the most exquisite promenades to be found anywhere on the seaboard of the continent. it somewhat resembles the new highway from villefranche to monte carlo; but the islands with which the sea is here studded recall rather cannes or the neighborhood of sorrento. the seaward views are everywhere delicious; and when sunset lights up the bare white rocks with pink and purple, no richer coloring against the emerald green bay, can possibly be imagined in art or nature. it is as good as torquay; and how can cosmopolitan say better? on the corniche, too, is the proper place nowadays to eat that famous old marseillais dish, immortalized by thackeray, and known as _bouillabaisse_. the réserve de roubion in particular prides itself on the manufacture of this strictly national provençal dainty, which proves, however, a little too rich and a little too mixed in its company for the fastidious taste of most english gourmets. greater exclusiveness and a more delicate eclecticism in matters of cookery please our countrymen better than such catholic comprehensiveness. i once asked a white-capped provençal _chef_ what were the precise ingredients of his boasted _bouillabaisse_; and the good man opened his palms expansively before him as he answered with a shrug, "que voulez-vous? fish to start with; and then--a handful of anything that happens to be lying about loose in the kitchen." near the end of the prado, at its junction with the corniche, modern marseilles rejoices also in its park or public garden. though laid out on a flat and uninteresting plain, with none of the natural advantages of the bois de boulogne or of the beautiful central park at new york, these pretty grounds are nevertheless interesting to the northern visitor, who makes his first acquaintance with the mediterranean here, by their curious and novel southern vegetation. the rich types of the south are everywhere apparent. clumps of bamboo in feathery clusters overhang the ornamental waters; cypresses and araucarias shade the gravel walks; the eucalyptus showers down its fluffy flowers upon the grass below; the quaint salisburia covers the ground in autumn with its pretty and curious maidenhair-shaped foliage. yuccas and cactuses flourish vigorously in the open air, and even fan-palms manage to thrive the year round in cosy corners. it is an introduction to the glories of rivieran vegetation, and a faint echo of the magnificent tones of the north african flora. as we wind in and out on our way back to marseilles by the corniche road, with the water ever dashing white from the blue against the solid crags, whose corners we turn at every tiny headland, the most conspicuous object in the nearer view is the château d'if, with the neighboring islets of pomègues and ratonneau. who knows not the château d'if, by name at least, has wasted his boyhood. the castle is not indeed of any great antiquity--it was built by order of françois i--nor can it lay much claim to picturesqueness of outline or beauty of architecture; but in historical and romantic associations it is peculiarly rich, and its situation is bold, interesting, and striking. it was here that mirabeau was imprisoned under a _lettre de cachet_ obtained by his father, the friend of man; and it was here, to pass from history to romance, that monte-cristo went through those marvelous and somewhat incredible adventures which will keep a hundred generations of school-boys in breathless suspense long after walter scott is dead and forgotten. but though the prado and the corniche are alive with carriages on sunny afternoons, it is on the quays themselves, and around the docks and basins, that the true vivacious marseillais life must be seen in all its full flow and eagerness. the quick southern temperament, the bronzed faces, the open-air existence, the hurry and bustle of a great seaport town, display themselves there to the best advantage. and the ports of marseilles are many and varied: their name is legion, and their shipping manifold. as long ago as 1850, the old square port, the phocæan harbor, was felt to have become wholly insufficient for the needs of modern commerce in marseilles. from that day to this, the accommodation for vessels has gone on increasing with that incredible rapidity which marks the great boom of modern times. never, surely, since the spacious days of great elizabeth, has the world so rapidly widened its borders as in these latter days in which we are all living. the pacific and the indian ocean have joined the atlantic. in 1853 the port de la joliette was added, therefore, to the old harbor, and people thought marseilles had met all the utmost demands of its growing commerce. but the bassin du lazaret and the bassin d'arenc were added shortly after; and then, in 1856, came the further need for yet another port, the bassin national. in 1872 the bassin de la gare maritime was finally executed; and now the marseillais are crying out again that the ships know not where to turn in the harbor. everywhere the world seems to cosmopolitanize itself and to extend its limits: the day of small things has passed away for ever; the day of vast ports, huge concerns, gigantic undertakings is full upon us. curiously enough, however, in spite of all this rapid and immense development, it is still to a great extent the greek merchants who hold in their hands--even in our own time--the entire commerce and wealth of the old phocæan city. a large hellenic colony of recent importation still inhabits and exploits marseilles. among the richly-dressed crowd of southern ladies that throngs the prado on a sunny afternoon in full season, no small proportion of the proudest and best equipped who loll back in their carriages were born at athens or in the ionic archipelago. for even to this day, these modern greeks hang together wonderfully with old greek persistence. their creed keeps them apart from the catholic french, in whose midst they live, and trade, and thrive; for, of course, they are all members of the "orthodox" church, and they retain their orthodoxy in spite of the ocean of latin christianity which girds them round with its flood on every side. the greek community, in fact, dwells apart, marries apart, worships apart, and thinks apart. the way the marriages, in particular, are most frequently managed, differs to a very curious extent from our notions of matrimonial proprieties. the system--as duly explained to me one day under the shady plane-trees of the allées de meilhan, in very choice modern greek, by a hellenic merchant of marseilles, who himself had been "arranged for" in this very manner--is both simple and mercantile to the highest degree yet practised in any civilized country. it is "marriage by purchase" pure and simple; only here, instead of the husband buying the wife, it is the wife who practically buys the husband. a trader or ship-owner of marseilles, let us say, has two sons, partners in his concern, who he desires to marry. it is important, however, that the wives he selects for them should not clash with the orthodoxy of the hellenic community. our merchant, therefore, anxious to do the best in both worlds at once, writes to his correspondents of the great greek houses in smyrna, constantinople, beyrout, and alexandria; nay, perhaps even in london, manchester, new york, and rio, stating his desire to settle his sons in life, and the amount of _dot_ they would respectively require from the ladies upon whom they decided to bestow their name and affections. the correspondents reply by return of post, recommending to the favorable attention of the happy swains certain greek young ladies in the town of their adoption, whose _dot_ and whose orthodoxy can be equally guaranteed as beyond suspicion. photographs and lawyers' letters are promptly exchanged; settlements are drawn up to the mutual satisfaction of both the high contracting parties; and when all the business portion of the transaction has been thoroughly sifted, the young ladies are consigned, with the figs and dates, as per bill of lading, to the port of entry, where their lords await them, and are duly married, on the morning of their arrival, at the greek church in the rue de la grande armée, by the reverend archimandrite. the greeks are an eminently commercial people, and they find this idyllic mode of conducting a courtship not only preserves the purity of the orthodox faith and the hellenic blood, but also saves an immense amount of time which might otherwise be wasted on the composition of useless love-letters. it was not so, however, in the earlier greek days. then, the colonists of marseilles and its dependent towns must have intermarried freely with the native gaulish and ligurian population of all the tributary provençal seaboard. the true antique hellenic stock--the aryan achæans of the classical period--were undoubtedly a fair, a light-haired race, with a far more marked proportion of the blond type than now survives among their mixed and degenerate modern descendants. in greece proper, a large intermixture of albanian and sclavonic blood, which the old athenians would have stigmatized as barbarian or scythian, has darkened the complexion and blackened the hair of a vast majority of the existing population. but in marseilles, curiously enough, and in the surrounding country, the genuine old light greek type has left its mark to this day upon the physique of the inhabitants. in the ethnographical map of france, prepared by two distinguished french savants, the other mediterranean departments are all, without exception, marked as "dark" or "very dark," while the department of the bouches du rhône is marked as "white," having, in fact, as large a proportion of fair complexions, blond hair, and light eyes as the eastern semi-german provinces, or as normandy and flanders. this curious survival of a very ancient type in spite of subsequent deluges, must be regarded as a notable instance of the way in which the popular stratum everywhere outlasts all changes of conquest and dynasty, of governing class and ruling family. just think, indeed, how many changes and revolutions in this respect that fiery marseilles has gone through since the early days of her hellenic independence! first came that fatal but perhaps indispensable error of inviting the roman aid against her ligurian enemies, which gave the romans their earliest foothold in southern gaul. then followed the foundation of aquæ sextiæ or aix, the first roman colony in what was soon to be the favorite province of the new conquerors. after that, in the great civil war, the greeks of marseilles were unlucky enough to espouse the losing cause; and, in the great day of cæsar's triumph, their town was reduced accordingly to the inferior position of a mere roman dependency. merged for a while in the all-absorbing empire, marseilles fell at last before visigoths and burgundians in the stormy days of that vast upheaval, during which it is impossible for even the minutest historian to follow in detail the long list of endless conquests and re-conquests, while the wandering tribes ebbed and flowed on one another in wild surging waves of refluent confusion. ostrogoth and frank, saracen and christian, fought one after another for possession of the mighty city. in the process her greek and roman civilization was wholly swept away and not a trace now remains of those glorious basilicas, temples, and arches, which must once, no doubt, have adorned the metropolis of grecian gaul far more abundantly than they still adorn mere provincial centers like arles and nîmes, vienne, and orange. but at the end of it all, when marseilles emerges once more into the light of day as an integral part of the kingdom of provence, it still retains its essentially greek population, fairer and handsomer than the surrounding dark ligurian stock; it still boasts its clear-cut greek beauty of profile, its hellenic sharpness of wit and quickness of perception. and how interesting in this relation to note, too, that marseilles kept up, till a comparatively late period in the middle ages, her active connection with the byzantine empire; and that her chief magistrate was long nominated--in name at least, if not in actual fact--by the shadowy representative of the cæsars at constantinople. may we not attribute to this continuous persistence of the greek element in the life of marseilles something of that curious local and self-satisfied feeling which northern frenchmen so often deride in the born marseillais? with the greeks, the sense of civic individuality and civic separateness was always strong. their _polis_ was to them their whole world--the center of everything. they were athenians, spartans, thebans first; greeks or even boeotians and lacedæmonians in the second place only. and the marseillais bourgeois, following the traditions of his phocæan ancestry, is still in a certain sense the most thoroughly provincial, the most uncentralized and anti-parisian of modern french citizens. he believes in marseilles even more devoutly than the average boulevardier believes in paris. to him the cannebière is the high street of the world, and the cours st. louis the hub of the universe. how pleased with himself and all his surroundings he is, too! "at marseilles, we do so-and-so," is a frequent phrase which seems to him to settle off-hand all questions of etiquette, of procedure, or of the fitness of things generally. "massilia locuta est; causa finita est." that anything can be done better anywhere than it is done in the cannebière or the old port is an idea that never even so much as occurs to his smart and quick but somewhat geographically limited intelligence. one of the best and cleverest of mars's clever marseillais caricatures exhibits a good bourgeois from the cours pierre puget, in his sunday best, abroad on his travels along the genoese riviera. on the shore at san remo, the happy, easy-going, conceited fellow, brimming over to the eyes with the happy-go-lucky cockney joy of the south, sees a couple of pretty italian fisher-girls mending their nets, and addresses them gaily in his own soft dialect: "hé bien, més pitchounettes, vous êtes tellement croussetillantes que, sans ézaggérer, bagasse! ze vous croyais de marseille!" to take anyone elsewhere for a born fellow-citizen was the highest compliment his good marseillais soul could possibly hit upon. nevertheless, the marseillais are not proud. they generously allow the rest of the world to come and admire them. they throw their doors open to east and west; they invite jew and greek alike to flow in unchecked, and help them make their own fortunes. they know very well that if marseilles, as they all firmly believe, is the finest town in the round world, it is the trade with the levant that made and keeps it so. and they take good care to lay themselves out for entertaining all and sundry as they come, in the handsomest hotels in southern europe. the mere through passenger traffic with india alone would serve to make marseilles nowadays a commercial town of the first importance. marseilles, however, has had to pay a heavy price, more than once, for her open intercourse with the eastern world, the native home of cholera and all other epidemics. from a very early time, the city by the rhône has been the favorite haunt of the plague and like oriental visitants; and more than one of its appalling epidemics has gained for itself a memorable place in history. to say the truth, old marseilles laid itself out almost deliberately for the righteous scourge of zymotic disease. the _vieille ville_, that trackless labyrinth of foul and noisome alleys, tortuous, deeply worn, ill-paved, ill-ventilated, has been partly cleared away by the works of the rue de la république now driven through its midst; but enough still remains of its dædalean maze to show the adventurous traveller who penetrates its dark and drainless dens how dirty the strenuous provençal can be when he bends his mind to it. there the true-blooded marseillais of the old rock and of the greek profile still lingers in his native insanitary condition; there the only scavenger is that "broom of provence," the swooping _mistral_--the fierce alpine wind which, blowing fresh down with sweeping violence from the frozen mountains, alone can change the air and cleanse the gutters of that filthy and malodorous mediæval city. everywhere else the _mistral_ is a curse: in marseilles it is accepted with mitigated gratitude as an excellent substitute for main drainage. it is not to be wondered at that, under such conditions, marseilles was periodically devastated by terrible epidemics. communications with constantinople, alexandria, and the levant were always frequent; communications with tunis, algiers, and morocco were far from uncommon. and if the germs of disease were imported from without, they found at marseilles an appropriate nest provided beforehand for their due development. time after time the city was ravaged by plague or pestilence; the most memorable occasion being the great epidemic of 1720, when, according to local statistics (too high, undoubtedly), as many as forty thousand persons died in the streets, "like lambs on the hill-tops." never, even in the east itself, the native home of the plague, says méry, the marseilles poet-romancer, was so sad a picture of devastation seen as in the doomed streets of that wealthy city. the pestilence came, according to public belief, in a cargo of wool in may, 1720: it raged till, by september, the tale of dead per diem had reached the appalling number of a thousand. so awful a public calamity was not without the usual effect in bringing forth counterbalancing examples of distinguished public service and noble self-denial. chief among them shines forth the name of the chevalier rose, who, aided by a couple of hundred condemned convicts, carried forth to burial in the ditches of la tourette no less than two thousand dead bodies which infected the streets with their deadly contagion. there, quicklime was thrown over the horrible festering mass, in a spot still remembered as the "graves of the plague-stricken." but posterity has chosen most especially to select for the honors of the occasion monseigneur belzunce--"marseilles' good bishop," as pope calls him, who returned in the hour of danger to his stricken flock from the salons of versailles, and by offering the last consolations of religion to the sick and dying, aided somewhat in checking the orgy of despair and of panic-stricken callousness which reigned everywhere throughout the doomed city. the picture is indeed a striking and romantic one. on a high altar raised in the cours which now bears his name, the brave bishop celebrated mass one day before the eyes of all his people, doing penance to heaven in the name of his flock, his feet bare, a rope round his neck, and a flaming torch held high in his hand, for the expiation of the sins that had brought such punishment. his fervent intercession, the faithful believed, was at last effectual. in may, 1721, the plague disappeared; but it left marseilles almost depopulated. the bishop's statue in bronze, by ramus, on the cours belzunce, now marks the site of this strange and unparalleled religious service. from the belzunce monument, the rue tapis vert and the allées des capucins lead us direct by a short cut to the boulevard longchamp, which terminates after the true modern parisian fashion, with a vista of the great fountains and the palais des arts, a bizarre and original but not in its way unpleasing specimen of recent french architecture. it is meretricious, of course--that goes without the saying: what else can one expect from the france of the second empire? but it is distinctly, what the children call "grand," and if once you can put yourself upon its peculiar level, it is not without a certain queer rococo beauty of its own. as for the château d'eau, its warmest admirer could hardly deny that it is painfully _baroque_ in design and execution. tigers, panthers, and lions decorate the approach; an allegorical figure representing the durance, accompanied by the geniuses of the vine and of corn, holds the seat of honor in the midst of the waterspouts. to right and left a triton blows his shelly trumpet; griffins and fauns crown the summit; and triumphal arches flank the sides. a marvelous work indeed, of the versailles type, better fitted to the ideas of the eighteenth century than to those of the age in which we live at present. the palais des arts, one wing of this monument, encloses the usual french provincial picture-gallery, with the stereotyped rubens, and the regulation caraccio. it has its raffael, its giulio romano, and its andrea del sarto. it even diverges, not without success, into the paths of dutch and flemish painting. but it is specially rich, of course, in provençal works, and its pugets in particular are both numerous and striking. there is a good murillo and a square-faced holbein, and many yards of modern french battles and nudities, alternating for the most part from the sensuous to the sanguinary. but the gem of the collection is a most characteristic and interesting perugino, as beautiful as anything from the master's hand to be found in the galleries of florence. altogether, the interior makes one forgive the façade and the château d'eau. one good perugino covers, like charity, a multitude of sins of the marseillais architects. strange to say, old as marseilles is, it contains to-day hardly any buildings of remote antiquity. one would be tempted to suppose beforehand that a town with so ancient and so continuous a history would teem with græco-roman and mediæval remains. as phocæan colony, imperial town, mediæval republic, or provençal city, it has so long been great, famous, and prosperous that one might not unnaturally expect in its streets to meet with endless memorials of its early grandeur. nothing could be farther from the actual fact. while nîmes, a mere second-rate provincial municipality, and arles, a local roman capital, have preserved rich mementoes of the imperial days--temples, arches, aqueducts, amphitheaters--marseilles, their mother city, so much older, so much richer, so much greater, so much more famous, has not a single roman building; scarcely even a second-rate mediæval chapel. its ancient cathedral has been long since pulled down; of its oldest church but a spire now remains, built into a vulgar modern pseudo-gothic calvary. st. victor alone, near the fort st. nicolas, is the one really fine piece of mediæval architecture still left in the town after so many ages. st. victor itself remains to us now as the last relic of a very ancient and important monastery, founded by st. cassian in the fifth century, and destroyed by the saracens--those incessant scourges of the provençal coast--during one of their frequent plundering incursions. in 1040 it was rebuilt, only to be once more razed to the ground, till, in 1350, pope urban v., who himself had been abbot of this very monastery restored it from the base, with those high, square towers, which now, in their worn and battered solidity, give it rather the air of a castellated fortress than of a christian temple. doubtless the strong-handed pope, warned by experience, intended his church to stand a siege, if necessary, on the next visit to marseilles of the paynim enemy. the interior, too, is not unworthy of notice. it contains the catacombs where, according to the naïve provençal faith, lazarus passed the last days of his second life; and it boasts an antique black image of the virgin, attributed by a veracious local legend to the skilful fingers of st. luke the evangelist. modern criticism ruthlessly relegates the work to a nameless but considerably later byzantine sculptor. by far the most interesting ecclesiastical edifice in marseilles, however, even in its present charred and shattered condition, is the ancient pilgrimage chapel of notre dame de la garde, the antique high place of primitive phoenician and ligurian worship. how long a shrine for some local cult has existed on the spot it would be hard to say, but, at least, we may put it at two dozen centuries. all along the mediterranean coast, in fact, one feels oneself everywhere thus closely in almost continuous contact with the earliest religious beliefs of the people. the paths that lead to these very antique sacred sites, crowning the wind-swept hills that overlook the valley, are uniformly worn deep by naked footsteps into the solid rock--a living record of countless generations of fervent worshipers. christianity itself is not nearly old enough to account for all those profoundly-cut steps in the schistose slate or hard white limestone of the provençal hills. the sanctity of the high places is more ancient by far than saint or madonna. before ever a christian chapel crested these heights they were crested by forgotten pagan temples; and before the days of aphrodite or pallas, in turn, they were crested by the shrines of some long since dead-and-buried gaulish or ligurian goddess. religions change, creeds disappear, but sacred sites remain as holy as ever; and here where priests now chant their loud hymns before the high altar, some nameless bloody rites took place, we may be sure, long ages since, before the lonely shrine of some celtic hesus or some hideous and deformed phoenician moloch. it is a steep climb even now from the old port or the anse des catalans to the colline notre dame; several different paths ascend to the summit, all alike of remote antiquity, and all ending at last in fatiguing steps. along the main road, hemmed in on either side by poor southern hovels, wondrous old witches of true provençal ugliness drive a brisk trade in rosaries, and chaplets, and blessed medals. these wares are for the pilgrim; but to suit all tastes, the same itinerant chapwomen offer to the more worldly-minded tourist of the cookian type appropriate gewgaws, in the shape of photographs, images, and cheap trinkets. at the summit stand the charred and blackened ruins of notre dame de la garde. of late years, indeed, that immemorial shrine has fallen on evil times and evil days in many matters. to begin with, the needs of modern defence compelled the government some years since to erect on the height a fort, which encloses in its midst the ancient chapel. even military necessities, however, had to yield in part to the persistent religious sentiment of the community; and though fortifications girt it round on every side, the sacred site of our lady remained unpolluted in the center of the great defensive works of the fortress. passing through the gates of those massive bastions a strongly-guarded path still guided the faithful sailor-folk of marseilles to the revered shrine of their ancestral madonna. nay, more; the antique chapel of the thirteenth century was superseded by a gorgeous byzantine building, from designs by espérandieu, all glittering with gold, and precious stones, and jewels. on the topmost belfry stood a gigantic gilded statue of our lady. dome and apse were of cunning workmanship--white carrara marble and african _rosso antico_ draped the interior with parti-colored splendor. corsican granite and esterel porphyry supported the massive beams of the transepts; frescoes covered every inch of the walls: the pavement was mosaic, the high altar was inlaid with costly florentine stonework. every marseilles fisherman rejoiced in heart that though the men of battle had usurped the sanctuary, their madonna was now housed by the sons of the faithful in even greater magnificence and glory than ever. but in 1884 a fire broke out in the shrine itself, which wrecked almost irreparably the sumptuous edifice. the statue of the virgin still crowns the façade, to be sure, and the chapel still shows up bravely from a modest distance; but within, all the glory has faded away, and the interior of the church is no longer accessible. nevertheless, the visitor who stands upon the platform in front of the doorway and gazes down upon the splendid panoramic view that stretches before him in the vale beneath, will hardly complain of having had his stiff pull uphill for nothing. except the view of montreal and the st. lawrence river from mont royal mountain, i hardly know a town view in the world to equal that from notre dame de la garde, for beauty and variety, on a clear spring morning. close at our feet lies the city itself, filling up the whole wide valley with its mass, and spreading out long arms of faubourg, or roadway, up the lateral openings. beyond rise the great white limestone hills, dotted about like mushrooms, with their glittering _bastides_. in front lies the sea--the blue mediterranean--with that treacherous smile which has so often deceived us all the day before we trusted ourselves too rashly, with ill-deserved confidence, upon its heaving bosom. near the shore the waves chafe the islets and the château d'if; then come the old port and the busy bassins; and, beyond them all, the chain of estaques, rising grim and gray in serrated outline against the western horizon. a beautiful prospect though barren and treeless, for nowhere in the world are mountains barer than those great white guardians of the provençal seaboard. the fortress that overhangs the old port at our feet itself deserves a few passing words of polite notice; for it is the fort st. nicolas, the one link in his great despotic chain by which louis quatorze bound recalcitrant marseilles to the throne of the tuileries. the town--like all great commercial towns--had always clung hard to its ancient liberties. ever rebellious when kings oppressed, it was a stronghold of the fronde; and when louis at last made his entry perforce into the malcontent city, it was through a breach he had effected in the heavy ramparts. the king stood upon this commanding spot, just above the harbor, and, gazing landward, asked the citizens round him how men called those little square boxes which he saw dotted about over the sunlit hillsides. "we call them _bastides_, sire," answered a courtly marseillais. "every citizen of our town has one." "moi aussi, je veux avoir ma bastide à marseille," cried the theatrical monarch, and straightway gave orders for building the fort st. nicolas: so runs the tale that passes for history. but as the fort stands in the very best possible position, commanding the port, and could only have been arranged for after consultation with the engineers of the period--it was vauban who planned it--i fear we must set down louis's _bon mot_ as one of those royal epigrams which has been carefully prepared and led up to beforehand. in every town, however, it is a favorite theory of mine that the best of all sights is the town itself: and nowhere on earth is this truism truer than here at marseilles. after one has climbed notre dame, and explored the prado and smiled at the château d'eau and stood beneath the frowning towers of st. victor, one returns once more with real pleasure and interest to the crowded cannebière and sees the full tide of human life flow eagerly on down that picturesque boulevard. that, after all, is the main picture that marseilles always leaves photographed on the visitor's memory. how eager, how keen, how vivacious is the talk; how fiery the eyes; how emphatic the gesture! with what teeming energy, with what feverish haste, the great city pours forth its hurrying thousands! with what endless spirit they move up and down in endless march upon its clattering pavements! _circulez, messieurs, circulez_: and they do just circulate! from the quai de la fraternité to the allées de meilhan, what mirth and merriment, what life and movement! in every _café_, what warm southern faces! at every shop-door, what quick-witted, sharp-tongued, bartering humanity! i have many times stopped at marseilles, on my way hither and thither round this terraqueous globe, farther south or east; but i never stop there without feeling once more the charm and interest of its strenuous personality. there is something of greek quickness and greek intelligence left even now about the old phocæan colony. a marseillais crowd has to this very day something of the sharp hellenic wit; and i believe the rollicking humor of aristophanes would be more readily seized by the public of the alcazar than by any other popular audience in modern europe. "bon chien chasse de race," and every marseillais is a born greek and a born littérateur. is it not partly to this old greek blood, then, that we may set down the long list of distinguished men who have drawn their first breath in the phocæan city? from the days of the troubadours, raymond des tours and barral des baux, folquet, and rostang, and de salles, and bérenger, through the days of d'urfé, and mascaron, and barbaroux, and de pastoret, to the days of méry, and barthélemy, and taxile delord, and joseph autran, marseilles has always been rich in talent. it is enough to say that her list of great men begins with petronius arbiter, and ends with thiers, to show how long and diversely she has been represented in her foremost citizens. surely, then, it is not mere fancy to suppose that in all this the true hellenic blood has counted for something! surely it is not too much to believe that with the greek profile and the greek complexion the inhabitants have still preserved to this day some modest measure of the quick greek intellect, the bright greek fancy, and the plastic and artistic greek creative faculty! i love to think it, for marseilles is dear to me; especially when i land there after a sound sea-tossing. unlike many of the old mediterranean towns, too, marseilles has not only a past but also a future. she lives and will live. in the middle of the past century, indeed, it might almost have seemed to a careless observer as if the mediterranean were "played out." and so in part, no doubt, it really is; the tracks of commerce and of international intercourse have shifted to wider seas and vaster waterways. we shall never again find that inland basin ringed round by a girdle of the great merchant cities that do the carrying trade and finance of the world. our area has widened, so that new york, rio, san francisco, yokohama, shanghai, calcutta, bombay, and melbourne have taken the place of syracuse, alexandria, tyre, and carthage, of florence, genoa, venice, and constantinople. but in spite of this cramping change, this degradation of the mediterranean from the center of the world into a mere auxiliary or side-avenue of the atlantic, a certain number of mediterranean ports have lived on uninterruptedly by force of position from one epoch into the other. venice has had its faint revival of recent years; trieste has had its rise; barcelona, algiers, smyrna, odessa, have grown into great harbors for cosmopolitan traffic. of this new and rejuvenescent mediterranean, girt round by the fresh young nationalities of italy and the orient, and itself no longer an inland sea, but linked by the suez canal with the indian ocean and so turned into the main highway of the nations between east and west, marseilles is still the key and the capital. that proud position the phocæan city is not likely to lose. and as the world is wider now than ever, the new marseilles is perforce a greater and a wealthier town than even the old one in its proudest days. where tribute came once from the north african, levantine, and italian coasts alone, it comes now from every shore of europe, asia, africa, and america, with australia and the pacific isles thrown in as an afterthought. regions cæsar never knew enrich the good greeks of the quai de la fraternité: brown, black, and yellow men whom his legions never saw send tea and silk, cotton, corn, and tobacco to the crowded warehouses of the cannebière and the rue de la république. vi nice the queen of the riviera--the port of limpia--castle hill--promenade des anglais--the carnival and battle of flowers--place masséna, the center of business--beauty of the suburbs--the road to monte carlo--the quaintly picturesque town of villefranche--aspects of nice and its environs. who loves not nice, knows it not. who knows it, loves it. i admit it is windy, dusty, gusty. i allow it is meretricious, fashionable, vulgar. i grant its carnival is a noisy orgy, its promenade a meeting place for all the wealthiest idlers of europe or america, and its clubs more desperate than monte carlo itself in their excessive devotion to games of hazard. and yet, with all its faults, i love it still. yes, deliberately love it; for nothing that man has done or may ever do to mar its native beauty can possibly deface that beauty itself as god made it. nay, more, just because it is nice, we can readily pardon it these obvious faults and minor blemishes. the queen of the riviera, with all her coquettish little airs and graces, pleases none the less, like some proud and haughty girl in court costume, partly by reason of that very finery of silks and feathers which we half-heartedly deprecate. if she were not herself, she would be other than she is. nice is nice, and that is enough for us. was ever town more graciously set, indeed, in more gracious surroundings? was ever pearl girt round with purer emeralds? on every side a vast semicircle of mountains hems it in, among which the bald and naked summit of the mont cau d'aspremont towers highest and most conspicuous above its darkling compeers. in front the blue mediterranean, that treacherous mediterranean all guile and loveliness, smiles with myriad dimples to the clear-cut horizon. eastward, the rocky promontories of the mont boron and the cap ferrat jut boldly out into the sea with their fringe of white dashing breakers. westward, the longer and lower spit of the point of antibes bounds the distant view, with the famous pilgrimage chapel of notre dame de la garoupe just dimly visible on its highest knoll against the serrated ridge of the glorious esterel in the background. in the midst of all nestles nice itself, the central gem in that coronet of mountains. there are warmer and more sheltered nooks on the riviera, i will allow: there can be none more beautiful. mentone may surpass it in the charm of its mountain paths and innumerable excursions; cannes in the rich variety of its nearer walks and drives; but for mingled glories of land and sea, art and nature, antiquity and novelty, picturesqueness and magnificence, nice still stands without a single rival on all that enchanted coast that stretches its long array of cities and bays between marseilles and genoa. there are those, i know, who run down nice as commonplace and vulgarized. but then they can never have strayed one inch, i feel sure, from the palm-shaded _trottoir_ of the promenade des anglais. if you want italian mediævalism, go to the old town; if you want quaint marine life, go to the good greek port of limpia; if you want a grand view of sea and land and snow mountains in the distance, go to the castle hill; if you want the most magnificent panorama in the whole of europe, go to the summit of the corniche road. no, no; these brawlers disturb our pure worship. we have only one nice, let us make the most of it. it is so easy to acquire a character for superiority by affecting to criticize what others admire. it is so easy to pronounce a place vulgar and uninteresting by taking care to see only the most vulgar and uninteresting parts of it. but the old rivieran who knows his nice well, and loves it dearly, is troubled rather by the opposite difficulty. where there is so much to look at and so much to describe, where to begin? what to omit? how much to glide over? how much to insist upon? language fails him to give a conception of this complex and polychromatic city in a few short pages to anyone who knows it by name alone as the cosmopolitan winter capital of fashionable seekers after health and pleasure. it is that, indeed, but it is so much more that one can never tell it. for there are at least three distinct nices, greek, italian, french; each of them beautiful in its own way, and each of them interesting for its own special features. to the extreme east, huddled in between the mont boron and the castle hill, lies the seafaring greek town, the most primitive and original nice of all; the home of the fisher-folk and the petty coasting sailors; the nicæa of the old undaunted phocæan colonists; the nizza di mare of modern italians; the mediæval city; the birthplace of garibaldi. divided from this earliest nice by the scarped rock on whose summit stood the château of the middle ages, the eighteenth century italian town (the old town as tourists nowadays usually call it, the central town of the three) occupies the space between the castle hill and the half dry bed of the paillon torrent. finally, west of the paillon, again, the modern fashionable pleasure resort extends its long line of villas, hotels, and palaces in front of the sea to the little stream of the magnan on the road to cannes, and stretches back in endless boulevards and avenues and gardens to the smiling heights of cimiez and carabacel. every one of these three towns, "in three different ages born," has its own special history and its own points of interest. every one of them teems with natural beauty, with picturesque elements, and with varieties of life, hard indeed to discover elsewhere. the usual guide-book way to attack nice is, of course, the topsy-turvey one, to begin at the haussmannised white façades of the promenade des anglais and work backwards gradually through the old town to the port of limpia and the original nucleus that surrounds its quays. i will venture, however, to disregard this time-honored but grossly unhistorical practice, and allow the reader and myself, for once in our lives, to "begin at the beginning." the port of limpia, then, is, of course, the natural starting point and prime original of the very oldest nice. hither, in the fifth century before the christian era, the bold phocæan settlers of marseilles sent out a little colony, which landed in the tiny land-locked harbor and called the spot nicæa (that is to say, the town of victory) in gratitude for their success against its rude ligurian owners. for twenty-two centuries it has retained that name almost unchanged, now perhaps, the only memento still remaining of its greek origin. during its flourishing days as a hellenic city nicæa ranked among the chief commercial entrepôts of the ligurian coast; but when "the province" fell at last into the hands of the romans, and the dictator cæsar favored rather the pretensions of cemenelum or cimiez on the hill-top in the rear, the town that clustered round the harbor of limpia became for a time merely the port of its more successful inland rival. cimiez still possesses its fine ruined roman amphitheater and baths, besides relics of temples and some other remains of the imperial period; but the "quartier du port," the ancient town of nice itself, is almost destitute of any architectural signs of its antique greatness. nevertheless, the quaint little seafaring village that clusters round the harbor, entirely cut off as it is by the ramping crags of the castle hill from its later representative, the italianized nice of the last century, may fairly claim to be the true nice of history, the only spot that bore that name till the days of the bourbons. its annals are far too long and far too eventful to be narrated here in full. goths, burgundians, lombards, and franks disputed for it in turn, as the border fortress between gaul and italy; and that familiar round white bastion on the eastern face of the castle hill, now known to visitors as the tour bellanda, and included (such is fate!) as a modern belvedere in the grounds of the comfortable pension suisse, was originally erected in the fifth century after christ to protect the town from the attacks of these insatiable invaders. but nice had its consolations, too, in these evil days, for when the lombards at last reduced the hill fortress of cimiez, the roman town, its survivors took refuge from their conquerors in the city by the port, which thus became once more, by the fall of its rival, unquestioned mistress of the surrounding littoral. the after story of nice is confused and confusing. now a vassal of the frankish kings; now again a member of the genoese league; now engaged in a desperate conflict with the piratical saracens; and now constituted into a little independent republic on the italian model; nizza struggled on against an adverse fate as a fighting-ground of the races, till it fell finally into the hands of the counts of savoy, to whom it owes whatever little still remains of the mediæval castle. continually changing hands between france and the kingdom of sardinia in later days, it was ultimately made over to napoleon iii. by the treaty of villafranca, and is now completely and entirely gallicized. the native dialect, however, remains even to the present day an intermediate form between provençal and italian, and is freely spoken (with more force than elegance) in the old town and around the enlarged modern basins of the port of limpia. indeed, for frankness of expression and perfect absence of any false delicacy, the ladies of the real old greek nice surpass even their london compeers at billingsgate. one of the most beautiful and unique features of nice at the present day is the castle hill a mass of solid rearing rock, not unlike its namesake at edinburgh in position, intervening between the port and the eighteenth century town, to which latter i will in future allude as the italian city. it is a wonderful place, that castle hill--wonderful alike by nature, art, and history, and i fear i must also add at the same time "uglification." in earlier days it bore on its summit or slopes the _château fort_ of the counts of provence with the old cathedral and archbishop's palace (now wholly destroyed), and the famous deep well, long ranked among the wonders of the world in the way of engineering. but military necessity knows no law; the cathedral gave place in the fifteenth century to the bastions of the duke of savoy's new-fangled castle; the castle itself in turn was mainly battered down in 1706 by the duke of berwick; and of all its antiquities none now remain save the tour bellanda, in its degraded condition of belvedere, and the scanty ground-plan of the mediæval buildings. nevertheless, the castle hill is still one of the loveliest and greenest spots in nice. a good carriage road ascends it to the top by leafy gradients, and leads to an open platform on the summit, now converted into charming gardens, rich with palms and aloes and cactuses and bright southern flowers. on one side, alas! a painfully artificial cataract, fed from the overflow of the waterworks, falls in stiff cascades among hand-built rockwork; but even that impertinent addition to the handicraft of nature can hardly offend the visitor for long among such glorious surroundings. for the view from the summit is one of the grandest in all france. the eye ranges right and left over a mingled panorama of sea and mountains, scarcely to be equaled anywhere round the lovely mediterranean, save on the ligurian coast and the neighborhood of sorrento. southward lies the blue expanse of water itself, bounded only in very clear and cloudless weather by the distant peaks of corsica on the doubtful horizon. westward, the coast-line includes the promontory of antibes, basking low on the sea, the iles lérins near cannes, the mouth of the var, and the dim-jagged ridge of the purple esterel. eastward, the bluff headland of the mont boron, grim and brown, blocks the view towards italy. close below the spectator's feet the three distinct towns of nice gather round the port and the two banks of the paillon, spreading their garden suburbs, draped in roses and lemon groves, high up the spurs of the neighboring mountains. but northward a tumultuous sea of alps rises billow-like to the sky, the nearer peaks frowning bare and rocky, while the more distant domes gleam white with virgin snow. it is a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. one glances around entranced, and murmurs to oneself slowly, "it is good to be here." below, the carriages are rolling like black specks along the crowded promenade, and the band is playing gaily in the public garden; but up there you look across to the eternal hills, and feel yourself face to face for one moment with the eternities behind them. one may descend from the summit either by the ancient cemetery or by the place garibaldi, through bosky gardens of date-palm, fan-palm, and agave. cool winding alleys now replace the demolished ramparts, and lovely views open out on every side as we proceed over the immediate foreground. at the foot of the castle hill, a modern road, hewn in the solid rock round the base of the seaward escarpment, connects the greek with the italian town. the angle where it turns the corner, bears on native lips the quaint provençal or rather niçois name of raüba capeu or rob-hat point, from the common occurrence of sudden gusts of wind, which remove the unsuspecting parisian headgear with effective rapidity, to the great joy of the observant _gamins_. indeed, windiness is altogether the weak point of nice, viewed as a health-resort; the town lies exposed in the open valley of the paillon, down whose baking bed the _mistral_, that scourge of provence, sweeps with violent force from the cold mountain-tops in the rear; and so it cannot for a moment compete in point of climate with cannes, monte carlo, mentone or san remo, backed up close behind by their guardian barrier of sheltering hills. but not even the _mistral_ can make those who love nice love her one atom the less. her virtues are so many that a little wholesome bluster once in a while may surely be forgiven her. and yet the dust does certainly rise in clouds at times from the promenade des anglais. the italian city, which succeeds next in order, is picturesque and old-fashioned, but is being daily transformed and gallicized out of all knowledge by its modern french masters. it dates back mainly to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the population became too dense for the narrow limits of the small greek town, and began to overflow, behind the castle hill, on to the eastern banks of the paillon torrent. the sea-front in this quarter, now known as the promenade du midi, has been modernized into a mere eastward prolongation of the promenade des anglais, of which "more anon;" but the remainder of the little triangular space between the castle hill and the river-bed still consists of funny narrow italian lanes, dark, dense, and dingy, from whose midst rises the odd and tile-covered dome of the cathedral of st. réparate. that was the whole of nice as it lived and moved till the beginning of this century; the real nice of to-day, the nice of the tourist, the invalid, and the fashionable world, the nice that we all visit or talk about, is a purely modern accretion of some half-dozen decades. this wonderful modern town, with its stately sea-front, its noble quays, its dainty white villas, its magnificent hotels, and its casino, owes its existence entirely to the vogue which the coast has acquired in our own times as a health-resort for consumptives. as long ago as smollett's time, the author of "roderick random" remarks complacently that an acquaintance, "understanding i intended to winter in the south of france, strongly recommended the climate of nice in provence, which indeed i had often heard extolled," as well he might have done. but in those days visitors had to live in the narrow and dirty streets of the italian town, whose picturesqueness itself can hardly atone for their unwholesome air and their unsavory odors. it was not till the hard winters of 1822-23-24 that a few kind-hearted english residents, anxious to find work for the starving poor, began the construction of a sea-road beyond the paillon, which still bears the name of the promenade des anglais. nice may well commemorate their deed to this day, for to them she owes as a watering-place her very existence. [illustration] the western suburb, thus pushed beyond the bed of the boundary torrent, has gradually grown in wealth and prosperity till it now represents the actual living nice of the tourist and the winter resident. but how to describe that gay and beautiful city; that vast agglomeration of villas, _pensions_, hotels, and clubs; that endless array of sun-worshipers gathered together to this temple of the sun from all the four quarters of the habitable globe? the sea-front consists of the promenade des anglais itself, which stretches in an unbroken line of white and glittering houses, most of them tasteless, but all splendid and all opulent, from the old bank of the paillon to its sister torrent, the magnan, some two miles away. on one side the villas front the shore with their fantastic façades; on the other side a walk, overshadowed with date-palms and purple-flowering judas-trees, lines the steep shingle beach of the tideless sea. there is one marked peculiarity of the promenade des anglais, however, which at once distinguishes it from any similar group of private houses to be found anywhere in england. there the british love of privacy, which has, of course, its good points, but has also its compensating disadvantages, leads almost every owner of beautiful grounds or gardens to enclose them with a high fence or with the hideous monstrosity known to suburban londoners as "park paling." this plan, while it ensures complete seclusion for the fortunate few within, shuts out the deserving many outside from all participation in the beauty of the grounds or the natural scenery. on the promenade des anglais, on the contrary, a certain generous spirit of emulation in contributing to the public enjoyment and the general effectiveness of the scene as a whole has prompted the owners of the villas along the sea-front to enclose their gardens only with low ornamental balustrades or with a slight and unobtrusive iron fence, so that the passers-by can see freely into every one of them, and feast their eyes on the beautiful shrubs and flowers. the houses and grounds thus form a long line of delightful though undoubtedly garish and ornate decorations, in full face of the sea. the same plan has been adopted in the noble residential street known as euclid avenue at cleveland, ohio, and in many other american cities. it is to be regretted that english tastes and habits do not oftener thus permit their wealthier classes to contribute, at no expense or trouble to themselves, to the general pleasure of less fortunate humanity. the promenade is, of course, during the season the focus and center of fashionable life at nice. here carriages roll, and amazons ride and flâneurs lounge in the warm sunshine during the livelong afternoon. in front are the baths, bathing being practicable at nice from the beginning of march; behind are the endless hotels and clubs of this city of strangers. for the english are not alone on the promenade des anglais; the american tongue is heard there quite as often as the british dialect, while germans, russians, poles, and austrians cluster thick upon the shady seats beneath the planes and carob-trees. during the carnival especially nice resolves itself into one long orgy of frivolous amusement. battles of flowers, battles of _confetti_, open-air masquerades, and universal tom-foolery pervade the place. everybody vies with everybody else in making himself ridiculous; and even the staid briton, released from the restraints of home or the city, abandons himself contentedly for a week at a time to a sort of prolonged and glorified sunny southern derby day. mr. bultitude disguises himself as a french clown; mr. dombey, in domino, flings roses at his friends on the seats of the tribune. everywhere is laughter, noise, bustle, and turmoil; everywhere the manifold forms of antique saturnalian freedom, decked out with gay flowers or travestied in quaint clothing, but imported most incongruously for a week in the year into the midst of our modern work-a-day twentieth-century europe. only a comparatively few winters ago fashionable nice consisted almost entirely of the promenade des anglais, with a few slight tags and appendages in either direction. at its eastern end stood (and still stands) the jardin public, that paradise of children and of be-ribboned french nursemaids, where the band discourses lively music every afternoon at four, and all the world sits round on two-sou chairs to let all the rest of the world see for itself it is still in evidence. these, and the stately quays along the paillon bank, lined with shops where female human nature can buy all the tastiest and most expensive gewgaws in europe, constituted the real nice of the early eighties. but with the rapid growth of that general taste for more sumptuous architecture which marks our age, the phocæan city woke up a few years since with electric energy to find itself in danger of being left behind by its younger competitors. so the niçois conscript fathers put their wise heads together, in conclave assembled, and resolved on a general transmogrification of the center of their town. by continuously bridging and vaulting across the almost dry bed of the paillon torrent they obtained a broad and central site for a new large garden, which now forms the natural focus of the transformed city. on the upper end of this important site they erected a large and handsome casino in the gorgeous style of the third republic, all glorious without and within, as the modern frenchman understands such glory, and provided with a theater, a winter garden, restaurants, cafés, ball-rooms, _petits chevaux_, and all the other most pressing requirements of an advanced civilization. but in doing this they sacrificed by the way the beautiful view towards the mountains behind, which can now only be obtained from the square masséna or the pont vieux farther up the river. most visitors to nice, however, care little for views, and a great deal for the fitful and fearsome joys embodied to their minds in the outward and visible form of a casino. this wholesale bridging over of the lower end of the paillon has united the french and italian towns and abolished the well-marked boundary line which once cut them off so conspicuously from one another. the inevitable result has been that the italian town too has undergone a considerable modernization along the sea-front, so that the promenade des anglais and the promenade du midi now practically merge into one continuous parade, and are lined along all their length with the same clipped palm-trees and the same magnificent white palatial buildings. when the old theater in the italian town was burnt down in the famous and fatal conflagration some years since the municipality erected a new one on the same site in the most approved style of parisian luxury. a little behind lie the préfecture and the beautiful flower market, which no visitor to nice should ever miss; for nice is above all things, even more than florence, a city of flowers. the sheltered quarter of the ponchettes, lying close under the lee of the castle hill, has become of late, owing to these changes, a favorite resort for invalids, who find here protection from the cutting winds which sweep with full force down the bare and open valley of the paillon over the french town. i am loth to quit that beloved sea-front, on the whole the most charming marine parade in europe, with the villefranche point and the pseudo-gothic, pseudo-oriental monstrosity of smith's folly on one side and the delicious bay towards antibes on the other. but there are yet various aspects of nice which remain to be described: the interior is almost as lovely in its way as the coast that fringes it. for this inner nice, the place masséna, called (like the place garibaldi) after another distinguished native, forms the starting point and center. here the trams from all quarters run together at last; hence the principal roads radiate in all directions. the place masséna is the center of business, as the jardin public and the casino are the centers of pleasure. also (_verbum sap._) it contains an excellent _pâtisserie_, where you can enjoy an ice or a little french pastry with less permanent harm to your constitution and morals than anywhere in europe. moreover, it forms the approach to the avenue de la gare, which divides with the quays the honor of being the best shopping street in the most fashionable watering-place of the mediterranean. if these delights thy soul may move, why, the place masséna is the exact spot to find them in. other great boulevards, like the boulevard victor hugo and the boulevard dubouchage, have been opened out of late years to let the surplus wealth that flows into nice in one constant stream find room to build upon. châteaux and gardens are springing up merrily on every side; the slopes of the hills gleam gay with villas; cimiez and carabacel, once separate villages, have now been united by continuous dwellings to the main town; and before long the city where garibaldi was born and where gambetta lies buried will swallow up in itself the entire space of the valley, and its border spurs from mountain to mountain. the suburbs, indeed, are almost more lovely in their way than the town itself; and as one wanders at will among the olive-clad hills to westward, looking down upon the green lemon-groves that encircle the villas, and the wealth of roses that drape their sides, one cannot wonder that joseph de maistre, another niçois of distinction, in the long dark evenings he spent at st. petersburg, should time and again have recalled with a sigh "ce doux vallon de magnan." nor have the russians themselves failed to appreciate the advantages of the change, for they flock by thousands to the orthodox quarter on the heights of saint philippe, which rings round the greek chapel erected in memory of the czarewitch nicholas alexandrowitch, who died at nice in 1865. after all, however, to the lover of the picturesque nice town itself is but the threshold and starting point for that lovely country which spreads on all sides its endless objects of interest and scenic beauty from antibes to mentone. the excursions to be made from it in every direction are simply endless. close by lie the monastery and amphitheater of cimiez; the italianesque cloisters and campanile of st. pons; the conspicuous observatory on the mont gros, with its grand alpine views; the hillside promenades of le ray and les fontaines. farther afield the carriage-road up the paillon valley leads direct to st. andré through a romantic limestone gorge, which terminates at last in a grotto and natural bridge, overhung by the moldering remains of a most southern château. a little higher up, the steep mountain track takes one on to falicon, perched "like an eagle's nest" on its panoramic hill-top, one of the most famous points of view among the maritime alps. the boundary hills of the magnan, covered in spring with the purple flowers of the wild gladiolus; the vine-clad heights of le bellet, looking down on the abrupt and rock-girt basin of the var; the valley of hepaticas, carpeted in march with innumerable spring blossoms; the longer drive to contes in the very heart of the mountains: all alike are lovely, and all alike tempt one to linger in their precincts among the shadow of the cypress trees or under the cool grottos green and lush with spreading fronds of wild maidenhair. among so many delicious excursions it were invidious to single out any for special praise; yet there can be little doubt that the most popular, at least with the general throng of tourists, is the magnificent coast-road by villefranche (or villafranca) to monte carlo and monaco. this particular part of the coast, between nice and mentone, is the one where the main range of the maritime alps, abutting at last on the sea, tumbles over sheer with a precipitous descent from four thousand feet high to the level of the mediterranean. formerly, the barrier ridge could only be surmounted by the steep but glorious corniche route; of late years, however, the french engineers, most famous of road-makers, have hewn an admirable carriage-drive out of the naked rock, often through covered galleries or tunnels in the cliff itself, the whole way from nice to monte carlo and mentone. the older portion of this road, between nice and villefranche, falls well within the scope of our present subject. you leave modern nice by the quays and the pont garibaldi, dash rapidly through the new broad streets that now intersect the italian city, skirt the square basins lately added to the more shapeless ancient greek port of limpia, and begin to mount the first spurs of the mont boron among the villas and gardens of the quartier du lazaret. banksia roses fall in cataracts over the walls as you go; looking back, the lovely panorama of nice opens out before your eyes. in the foreground, the rocky islets of la réserve foam white with the perpetual plashing of that summer sea. in the middle distance, the old greek harbor, with its mole and lighthouse, stands out against the steep rocks of the castle hill. the background rises up in chain on chain of alps, allowing just a glimpse at their base of that gay and fickle promenade and all the parisian prettinesses of the new french town. the whole forms a wonderful picture of the varied mediterranean world, greek, roman, italian, french, with the vine-clad hills and orange-groves behind merging slowly upward into the snow-bound alps. turning the corner of the mont boron by the grotesque vulgarisms of the château smith (a curious semi-oriental specimen of the shell-grotto order of architecture on a gigantic scale) a totally fresh view bursts upon our eyes of the rade de villefranche, that exquisite land-locked bay bounded on one side by the scarped crags of the mont boron itself, and on the other by the long and rocky peninsula of st. jean, which terminates in the cap ferrat and the villefranche light. the long deep bay forms a favorite roadstead and rendezvous for the french mediterranean squadron, whose huge ironclad monsters may often be seen ploughing their way in single file from seaward round the projecting headlands, or basking at ease on the calm surface of that glassy pond. the surrounding heights, of course, bristle with fortifications, which, in these suspicious days of armed european tension, the tourist and the sketcher are strictly prohibited from inspecting with too attentive an eye. the quaintly picturesque town of villefranche itself, italian and dirty, but amply redeemed by its slender bell-tower and its olive-clad terraces, nestles snugly at the very bottom of its pocket-like bay. the new road to monte carlo leaves it far below, with true modern contempt for mere old-world beauty; the artist and the lover of nature will know better than to follow the example of those ruthless engineers; they will find many subjects for a sketch among those whitewashed walls, and many a rare sea-flower tucked away unseen among those crannied crags. and now, when all is said and done, i, who have known and loved nice for so many bright winters, feel only too acutely how utterly i have failed to set before those of my readers who know it not the infinite charms of that gay and rose-wreathed queen of the smiling riviera. for what words can paint the life and movement of the sparkling sea-front? the manifold humors of the jardin public? the southern vivacity of the washer-women who pound their clothes with big stones in the dry bed of the pebbly paillon? the luxuriant festoons of honeysuckle and mimosa that drape the trellis-work arcades of carabacel and cimiez? who shall describe aright with one pen the gnarled olives of beaulieu and the palace-like front of the cercle de la méditerranée? who shall write with equal truth of the jewelers' shops on the quays, of the oriental bazaars of the avenue, and of the dome after dome of bare mountain tops that rise ever in long perspective to the brilliant white summits of the great alpine backbone? who shall tell in one breath of the carmagnoles of the carnival, or the dust-begrimed bouquets of the battle of flowers, and of the silent summits of the mont cau and the cime de vinaigrier, or the vast and varied sea-view that bursts on the soul unawares from the corniche near eza? there are aspects of nice and its environs which recall bartholomew fair, or the champs élysées after a sunday review; and there are aspects which recall the prospect from some solemn summit of the bernese oberland, mixed with some heather-clad hill overlooking the green atlantic among the western highlands. yet all is so graciously touched and lighted with mediterranean color and mediterranean sunshine, that even in the midst of her wildest frolics you can seldom be seriously angry with nice. the works of god's hand are never far off. you look up from the crowd of carriages and loungers on the promenade des anglais, and the cap ferrat rises bold and bluff before your eyes above the dashing white waves of the sky-blue sea: you cross the bridge behind the casino amid the murmur of the quays, and the great bald mountains soar aloft to heaven above the brawling valley of the snow-fed paillon. it is a desecration, perhaps, but a desecration that leaves you still face to face with all that is purest and most beautiful in nature. and then, the flowers, the waves, the soft air, the sunshine! on the beach, between the bathing places, men are drying scented orange peel to manufacture perfumes: in the dusty high roads you catch whiffs as you pass of lemon blossom and gardenia: the very trade of the town is an expert trade in golden acacia and crimson anemones: the very _gamins_ pelt you in the rough horse-play of the carnival with sweet-smelling bunches of syringa and lilac. luxury that elsewhere would move one to righteous wrath is here so democratic in its display that one almost condones it. the gleaming white villas, with carved caryatides or sculptured porches of freestone nymphs, let the wayfarer revel as he goes in the riches of their shrubberies or their sunlit fountains and in the breezes that blow over their perfumed parterres. nice vulgar! pah, my friend, if you say so, i know well why. you have a vulgar soul that sees only the gewgaws and the painted ladies. you have never strolled up by yourself from the noise and dust of the crowded town to the free heights of the mont alban or the flowery olive-grounds of the magnan valley. you have never hunted for purple hellebore among the gorges of the paillon or picked orchids and irises in big handfuls upon the slopes of saint andré. i doubt even whether you have once turned aside for a moment from the gay crowd of the casino and the place masséna into the narrow streets of the italian town; communed in their own delicious dialect with the free fisherfolk of the limpia quarter; or looked out with joy upon the tumbled plain of mountain heights from the breezy level of the castle platform. probably you have only sat for days in the balcony of your hotel, rolled at your ease down the afternoon promenade, worn a false nose at the evening parade of the carnival, or returned late at night by the last train from monte carlo with your pocket much lighter and your heart much heavier than when you left by the morning express in search of fortune. and then you say nice is vulgar! you have no eyes, it seems, for sea, or shore, or sky, or mountain; but you look down curiously at the dust in the street, and you mutter to yourself that you find it uninteresting. when you go to nice again, walk alone up the hills to falicon, returning by le ray, and then say, if you dare, nice is anything on earth but gloriously beautiful. vii the riviera in the days of the doges--origin of the name--the blue bay of cannes--ste. marguerite and st. honorat--historical associations--the rue l'antibes--the rock of monaco--"notre dame de la roulette"--from monte carlo to mentone--san remo--a romantic railway. "oh, land of roses, what bulbul shall sing of thee?" in plain prose, how describe the garden of europe? the riviera! who knows, save he who has been there, the vague sense of delight which the very name recalls to the poor winter exile, banished by frost and cold from the fogs and bronchitis of more northern climes? what visions of gray olives, shimmering silvery in the breeze on terraced mountain slopes! what cataracts of marshal niels, falling in rich profusion over gray limestone walls! what aloes and cactuses on what sun-smitten rocks! what picnics in december beneath what cloudless blue skies! but to those who know and appreciate it best, the riviera is something more than mere scenery and sunshine. it is life, it is health, it is strength, it is rejuvenescence. the return to it in autumn is as the renewal of youth. its very faults are dear to us, for they are the defects of its virtues. we can put up with its dust when we remember that dust means sun and dry air; we can forgive its staring white roads when we reflect to ourselves that they depend upon almost unfailing fine weather and bright, clear skies, when northern europe is wrapped in fog and cold and wretchedness. and what is this riviera that we feeble folk who "winter in the south" know and adore so well? has everybody been there, or may one venture even now to paint it in words once more for the twentieth time? well, after all, how narrow is our conception of "everybody!" i suppose one out of every thousand at a moderate estimate, has visited that smiling coast that spreads its entrancing bays between marseilles and genoa; my description is, therefore, primarily for the nine hundred and ninety-nine who have not been there. and even the thousandth himself, if he knows his cannes and his mentone well, will not grudge me a reminiscence of those delicious gulfs and those charming headlands that must be indelibly photographed on his memory. the name riviera is now practically english. but in origin it is genoese. to those seafaring folk, in the days of the doges, the coasts to east and west of their own princely city were known, naturally enough, as the riviera di levante and the riviera di ponente respectively, the shores of the rising and the setting sun. but on english lips the qualifying clause "di ponente" has gradually in usage dropped out altogether, and we speak nowadays of this favored winter resort, by a somewhat illogical clipping, simply as "the riviera." in our modern and specially english sense, then, the riviera means the long and fertile strip of coast between the arid mountains and the ligurian sea, beginning at st. raphael and ending at genoa. hyères, it is true, is commonly reckoned of late among riviera towns, but by courtesy only. it lies, strictly speaking, outside the charmed circle. one may say that the riviera, properly so called, has its origin where the estérel abuts upon the gulf of fréjus, and extends as far as the outliers of the alps skirt the italian shore of the mediterranean. now, the riviera is just the point where the greatest central mountain system of all europe topples over most directly into the warmest sea. and its best-known resorts, nice, monte carlo, mentone, occupy the precise place where the very axis of the ridge abuts at last on the shallow and basking mediterranean. they are therefore as favorably situated with regard to the mountain wall as pallanza or riva, with the further advantage of a more southern position and of a neighboring extent of sunny sea to warm them. the maritime alps cut off all northerly winds; while the hot air of the desert, tempered by passing over a wide expanse of mediterranean waves, arrives on the coast as a delicious breeze, no longer dry and relaxing, but at once genial and refreshing. add to these varied advantages the dryness of climate due to an essentially continental position (for the mediterranean is after all a mere inland salt lake), and it is no wonder we all swear by the riviera as the fairest and most pleasant of winter resorts. my own opinion remains always unshaken, that antibes, for climate, may fairly claim to rank as the best spot in europe or round the shores of the mediterranean. not that i am by any means a bigoted antipolitan. i have tried every other nook and cranny along that delightful coast, from carqueyranne to cornigliano, and i will allow that every one of them has for certain purposes its own special advantages. all, all are charming. indeed, the riviera is to my mind one long feast of delights. from the moment the railway strikes the sea near fréjus the traveller feels he can only do justice to the scenery on either side by looking both ways at once, and so "contracting a squint," like a sausage-seller in aristophanes. those glorious peaks of the estérel alone would encourage the most prosaic to "drop into poetry," as readily as mr. silas wegg himself in the mansion of the boffins. how am i to describe them, those rearing masses of rock, huge tors of red porphyry, rising sheer into the air with their roseate crags from a deep green base of mediterranean pinewood? when the sun strikes their sides, they glow like fire. there they lie in their beauty, like a huge rock pushed out into the sea, the advance-guard of the alps, unbroken save by the one high-road that runs boldly through their unpeopled midst, and by the timider railway that, fearing to tunnel their solid porphyry depths, winds cautiously round their base by the craggy sea-shore, and so gives us as we pass endless lovely glimpses into sapphire bays with red cliffs and rocky lighthouse-crowned islets. on the whole, i consider the estérel, as scenery alone, the loveliest "bit" on the whole riviera; though wanting in human additions, as nature it is the best, the most varied in outline, the most vivid in coloring. turning the corner by agay, you come suddenly, all unawares, on the blue bay of cannes, or rather on the golfe de la napoule, whose very name betrays unintentionally the intense newness and unexpectedness of all this populous coast, this "little england beyond france" that has grown up apace round lord brougham's villa on the shore by the mouth of the siagne. for when the bay beside the estérel received its present name, la napoule, not cannes, was still the principal village on its bank. nowadays, people drive over on a spare afternoon from the crowded fashionable town to the slumbrous little hamlet; but in older days la napoule was a busy local market when cannes was nothing more than a petty hamlet of provençal fishermen. the golfe de la napoule ends at the croisette of cannes, a long, low promontory carried out into the sea by a submarine bank, whose farthest points re-emerge as the two iles lérins, ste. marguerite and st. honorat. their names are famous in history. a little steamer plies from cannes to "the islands," as everybody calls them locally; and the trip, in calm weather, if the alps are pleased to shine out, is a pleasant and instructive one. ste. marguerite lies somewhat the nearer of the two, a pretty little islet, covered with a thick growth of maritime pines, and celebrated as the prison of that mysterious being, the man with the iron mask, who has given rise to so much foolish and fruitless speculation. near the landing-place stands the fort, perched on a high cliff and looking across to the croisette. uninteresting in itself, this old fortification is much visited by wonder-loving tourists for the sake of its famous prisoner, whose memory still haunts the narrow terrace corridor, where he paced up and down for seventeen years of unrelieved captivity. st. honorat stands farther out to sea than its sister island, and, though lower and flatter, is in some ways more picturesque, in virtue of its massive mediæval monastery and its historical associations. in the early middle ages, when communications were still largely carried on by water, the convent of the iles lérins enjoyed much reputation as a favorite stopping-place, one might almost say hotel, for pilgrims to or from rome; and most of the early british christians in their continental wanderings found shelter at one time or another under its hospitable roof. st. augustine stopped here on his way to canterbury; st. patrick took the convent on his road from ireland; salvian wrote within its walls his dismal jeremiad; vincent de lérins composed in it his "pilgrim's guide." the somber vaults of the ancient cloister still bear witness by their astonishingly thick and solid masonry to their double use as monastery and as place of refuge from the "saracens," the barbary corsairs of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. indeed, paynim fleets plundered the place more than once, and massacred the monks in cold blood. of cannes itself, marvelous product of this gad-about and commercial age, how shall the truthful chronicler speak with becoming respect and becoming dignity? for cannes has its faults. truly a wonderful place is that cosmopolitan winter resort. rococo châteaux, glorious gardens of palm-trees, imitation moorish villas, wooden châlets from the scene-painter's ideal switzerland, elizabethan mansions stuck in italian grounds, lovely groves of mimosa, eucalyptus, and judas-trees, all mingle together in so strange and incongruous a picture that one knows not when to laugh, when to weep, when to admire, when to cry "out on it!" imagine a conglomeration of two or three white-faced parisian streets, interspersed with little bits of england, of brussels, of algiers, of constantinople, of pekin, of bern, of nuremberg and of venice, jumbled side by side on a green provençal hillside before a beautiful bay, and you get modern cannes; a babel set in paradise; a sort of _boulevardier_ bond street, with a view across blue waves to the serrated peaks of the ever lovely estérel. nay; try as it will, cannes cannot help being beautiful. nature has done so much for it that art itself, the debased french art of the empire and the republic, can never for one moment succeed in making it ugly; though i am bound to admit it has striven as hard as it knew for that laudable object. but cannes is cannes still, in spite of grand dukes and landscape gardeners and architects. and the old town, at least, is yet wholly unspoilt by the speculative builder. almost every riviera watering-place has such an old-world nucleus or kernel of its own, the quaint fisher village of ancient days, round which the meretricious modern villas have clustered, one by one, in irregular succession. at cannes the old town is even more conspicuous than elsewhere; for it clambers up the steep sides of a little seaward hillock, crowned by the tower of an eleventh century church, and is as picturesque, as gray, as dirty, as most other haunts of the hardy provençal fisherman. strange, too, to see how the two streams of life flow on ever, side by side, yet ever unmingled. the cannes of the fishermen is to this day as unvaried as if the new cosmopolitan winter resort had never grown up, with its anglo-russian airs and graces, its german-american frivolities, round that unpromising center. the rue d'antibes is the principal shopping street of the newer and richer cannes. if we follow it out into the country by its straight french boulevard it leads us at last to the funny old border city from which it still takes its unpretending name. antibes itself belongs to that very first crop of civilized provençal towns which owe their origin to the sturdy old phocæan colonists. it is a greek city by descent, the antipolis which faced and defended the harbor of nicæa; and for picturesqueness and beauty it has not its equal on the whole picturesque and beautiful riviera. everybody who has travelled by the "paris, lyon, méditerranée" knows well the exquisite view of the mole and harbor as seen in passing from the railway. but that charming glimpse, quaint and varied as it is, gives by no means a full idea of the ancient phocæan city. the town stands still surrounded by its bristling fortification, the work of vauban, pierced by narrow gates in their thickness, and topped with noble ramparts. the fort carré that crowns the seaward promontory, the rocky islets, and the two stone breakwaters of the port (a small-scale genoa), all add to the striking effect of the situation and prospect. within, the place is as quaint and curious as without: a labyrinth of narrow streets, poor in memorials of antipolis, but rich in roman remains, including that famous and pathetic inscription to the boy septentrio, qvi antipoli in theatro bidvo saltavit et placvit. the last three words borrowed from this provincial tombstone, have become proverbial of the short-lived glory of the actor's art. the general aspect of antibes town, however, is at present mediæval, or even seventeenth century. a flavor as of louis quatorz pervades the whole city, with its obtrusive military air of a border fortress; for, of course, while the var still formed the frontier between france and italy, antibes ranked necessarily as a strategic post of immense importance; and at the present day, in our new recrudescence of military barbarism, great barracks surround the fortifications with fresh white-washed walls, and the "hun! deusse!" of the noisy french drill-sergeant resounds all day long from the exercise-ground by the railway station. antibes itself is therefore by no means a place to stop at; it is the cap d'antibes close by that attracts now every year an increasing influx of peaceful and cultivated visitors. the walks and drives are charming; the pine-woods, carpeted with wild anemones, are a dream of delight; and the view from the lighthouse hill behind the town is one of the loveliest and most varied on the whole round mediterranean. but i must not linger here over the beauties of the cap d'antibes, but must be pushing onwards towards monaco and monte carlo. it is a wonderful spot, this little principality of monaco, hemmed in between the high mountains and the assailing sea, and long hermetically cut off from all its more powerful and commercial neighbors. between the palm-lined boulevards of nice and the grand amphitheater of mountains that shuts in mentone as with a perfect semicircle of rearing peaks, one rugged buttress, the last long subsiding spur of the great alpine axis, runs boldly out to seaward, and ends in the bluff rocky headland of the tête de chien that overhangs monte carlo. till very lately no road ever succeeded in turning the foot of that precipitous promontory: the famous corniche route runs along a ledge high up its beetling side, past the massive roman ruin of turbia, and looks down from a height of fifteen hundred feet upon the palace of monaco. this mountain bulwark of the turbia long formed the real boundary line between ancient gaul and liguria; and on its very summit, where the narrow roman road wound along the steep pass now widened into the magnificent highway of the corniche, augustus built a solid square monument to mark the limit between the province and the italian soil, as well as to overawe the mountaineers of this turbulent region. a round mediæval tower, at present likewise in ruins, crowns the roman work. here the alps end abruptly. the rock of monaco at the base is their last ineffectual seaward protest. and what a rock it is, that quaint ridge of land, crowned by the strange capital of that miniature principality! figure to yourself a huge whale petrified, as he basks there on the shoals his back rising some two hundred feet from the water's edge, his head to the sea, and his tail just touching the mainland, and you have a rough mental picture of the rock of monaco. it is, in fact, an isolated hillock, jutting into the mediterranean at the foot of the maritime alps (a final reminder, as it were, of their dying dignity), and united to the undercliff only by a narrow isthmus at the foot of the crag which bears the mediæval bastions of the prince's palace. as you look down on it from above from the heights of the corniche, i have no hesitation in saying it forms the most picturesque town site in all europe. on every side, save seaward, huge mountains gird it round; while towards the smiling blue mediterranean itself the great rock runs outward, bathed by tiny white breakers in every part, except where the low isthmus links it to the shore; and with a good field-glass you can see down in a bird's eye view into every street and courtyard of the clean little capital. the red-tiled houses, the white palace with its orderly gardens and quadrangles, the round lunettes of the old wall, the steep cobbled mule-path which mounts the rock from the modern railway-station, all lie spread out before one like a pictorial map, painted in the bright blue of mediterranean seas, the dazzling gray of mediterranean sunshine, and the brilliant russet of mediterranean roofs. there can be no question at all that monte carlo even now, with all its gew-gaw additions, is very beautiful: no haussmann could spoil so much loveliness of position; and even the new town itself, which grows apace each time i revisit it, has a picturesqueness of hardy arch, bold rock, well-perched villa, which redeems it to a great extent from any rash charge of common vulgarity. all looks like a scene in a theater, not like a prosaic bit of this work-a-day world of ours. around us is the blue mediterranean, broken into a hundred petty sapphire bays. back of us rise tier after tier of maritime alps, their huge summits clouded in a fleecy mist. to the left stands the white rock of monaco; to the right, the green italian shore, fading away into the purple mountains that guard the gulf of genoa. lovely by nature, the immediate neighborhood of the casino has been made in some ways still more lovely by art. from the water's edge, terraces of tropical vegetation succeed one another in gradual steps towards the grand façade of the gambling-house; clusters of palms and aloes, their base girt by exotic flowers, are thrust cunningly into the foreground of every point in the view, so that you see the bay and the mountains through the artistic vistas thus deftly arranged in the very spots where a painter's fancy would have set them. you look across to monaco past a clump of drooping date-branches; you catch a glimpse of bordighera through a framework of spreading dracænas and quaintly symmetrical fan-palms. once more under way, and this time on foot. for the road from monte carlo to mentone is almost as lovely in its way as that from nice to monte carlo. it runs at first among the ever-increasing villas and hotels of the capital of chance, and past that sumptuous church, built from the gains of the table, which native wit has not inaptly christened "nôtre dame de la roulette." there is one point of view of monaco and its bay, on the slopes of the cap martin, not far from roquebrune, so beautiful that though i have seen it, i suppose, a hundred times or more, i can never come upon it to this day without giving vent to an involuntary cry of surprise and admiration. roquebrune itself, which was an italian roccabruna when i first knew it, has a quaint situation of its own, and a quaint story connected with it. brown as its own rocks, the tumbled little village stands oddly jumbled in and out among huge masses of pudding-stone, which must have fallen at some time or other in headlong confusion from the scarred face of the neighboring hillside. from the corniche road it is still quite easy to recognize the bare patch on the mountain slope whence the landslip detached itself, and to trace its path down the hill to its existing position. but local legend goes a little farther than that: it asks us to believe that the rock fell as we see it _with the houses on top_; in other words, that the village was built before the catastrophe took place, and that it glided down piecemeal into the tossed-about form it at present presents to us. be this as it may, and the story makes some demand on the hearer's credulity, it is certain that the houses now occupy most picturesque positions: here perched by twos and threes on broken masses of conglomerate, there wedged in between two great walls of beetling cliff, and yonder again hanging for dear life to some slender foothold on the precipitous hillside. we reach the summit of the pass. the bay of monaco is separated from the bay of mentone by the long, low-headland of cap martin, covered with olive groves and scrubby maritime pines. as one turns the corner from roquebrune by the col round the cliff, there bursts suddenly upon the view one of the loveliest prospects to be beheld from the corniche. at our feet, embowered among green lemons and orange trees, mentone half hides itself behind its villas and its gardens. in the middle distance the old church with its tall italian campanile stands out against the blue peaks of that magnificent amphitheater. beyond, again, a narrow gorge marks the site of the pont st. louis and the italian frontier. farther eastward the red rocks merge half indistinctly into the point of la mortola, with mr. hanbury's famous garden; then come the cliffs and fortifications of ventimiglia, gleaming white in the sun; and last of all, the purple hills that hem in san remo. it is an appropriate approach to a most lovely spot; for mentone ranks high for beauty, even among her bevy of fair sisters on the ligurian sea-board. yes, mentone is beautiful, most undeniably beautiful; and for walks and drives perhaps it may bear away the palm from all rivals on that enchanted and enchanting riviera. five separate valleys, each carved out by its own torrent, with dry winter bed, converge upon the sea within the town precincts. four principal rocky ridges divide these valleys with their chine-like backbone, besides numberless minor spurs branching laterally inland. each valley is threaded by a well-made carriage-road, and each dividing ridge is climbed by a bridle-path and footway. the consequence is that the walks and drives at mentone are never exhausted, and excursions among the hills might occupy the industrious pedestrian for many successive winters. what hills they are, too, those great bare needles and pinnacles of rock, worn into jagged peaks and points by the ceaseless rain of ages, and looking down from their inaccessible tops with glittering scorn upon the green lemon groves beneath them! the next town on the line, bordighera, is better known to the world at large as a rivieran winter resort, though of a milder and quieter type, i do not say than nice or cannes, but than mentone or san remo. bordighera, indeed, has just reached that pleasant intermediate stage in the evolution of a rivieran watering-place when all positive needs of the northern stranger are amply supplied, while crowds and fashionable amusements have not yet begun to invade its primitive simplicity. the walks and drives on every side are charming; the hotels are comfortable, and the prices are still by no means prohibitive. [illustration] san remo comes next in order of the cosmopolitan winter resorts: san remo, thickly strewn with spectacled germans, like leaves in vallombrosa, since the emperor frederick chose the place for his last despairing rally. the teuton finds himself more at home, indeed, across the friendly italian border than in hostile france; and the st. gotthard gives him easy access by a pleasant route to these nearer ligurian towns, so that the fatherland has now almost annexed san remo, as england has annexed cannes, and america nice and cimiez. built in the evil days of the middle ages, when every house was a fortress and every breeze bore a saracen, san remo presents to-day a picturesque labyrinth of streets, lanes, vaults, and alleys, only to be surpassed in the quaint neighboring village of taggia. this is the heart of the earthquake region, too; and to protect themselves against that frequent and unwelcome visitor, whose mark may be seen on half the walls in the outskirts, the inhabitants of san remo have strengthened their houses by a system of arches thrown at varying heights across the tangled paths, which recalls algiers or tunis. from certain points of view, and especially from the east side, san remo thus resembles a huge pyramid of solid masonry, or a monstrous pagoda hewn out by giant hands from a block of white free-stone. as dickens well worded it, one seems to pass through the town by going perpetually from cellar to cellar. a romantic railway skirts the coast from san remo to alassio and savona. it forms one long succession of tunnels, interspersed with frequent breathing spaces beside lovely bays, "the peacock's neck in hue," as the laureate sings of them. one town after another sweeps gradually into view round the corner of a promontory, a white mass of houses crowning some steep point of rock, of which alassio alone has as yet any pretensions to be considered a home for northern visitors. viii genoa early history--old fortifications--the rival of venice--changes of twenty-five years--from the parapet of the corso--the lower town--the genoese palazzi--monument to christopher columbus--the old dogana--memorials in the campo santo--the bay of spezzia--the isola palmeria--harbor scenes. genova la superba--genoa the proud--an epithet not inappropriate for this city of merchant princes of olden days, which was once the emporium of the tyrrhenian, as was venice of the adriatic sea, and the rival of the latter for the commerce of the eastern mediterranean. no two cities, adapted to play a similar part in history, could be more unlike in their natural environments: venice clustered on a series of mud banks, parted by an expanse of water from a low coast-line, beyond which the far-away mountains rise dimly in the distance, a fleet, as it were, of houses anchored in the shallows of the adriatic; genoa stretching along the shore by the deepening water, at the very feet of the apennines, climbing up their slopes, and crowning their lower summits with its watch-towers. no seaport in italy possesses a site so rich in natural beauty, not even spezzia in its bay, for though the scenery in the neighborhood certainly surpasses that around genoa, the town itself is built upon an almost level plain; not even naples itself, notwithstanding the magnificent sweep of its bay, dominated by the volcanic cone of vesuvius, and bounded by the limestone crags of the range of monte s. angelo. genoa, however, like all places and persons, has had its detractors. perhaps of no town has a more bitter sarcasm been uttered, than the well known one, which no doubt originated in the mouth of some envious tuscan, when the two peoples were contending for the mastery of the western sea, and the maker of the epigram was on the losing side. familiar as it is to many, we will venture to quote it again, as it may be rendered in our own tongue: "treeless hills, a fishless sea, faithless men, shameless women." as to the reproach in the first clause, one must admit there is still some truth; and in olden days, when gardens were fewer and more land was left in its natural condition, there may have been even more point. the hills around genoa undoubtedly seem a little barren, when compared with those on the riviera some miles farther to the south, with their extraordinary luxuriance of vegetation, their endless slopes of olives, which only cease to give place to oak and pine and myrtle. there is also, i believe, some truth in the second clause; but as to the rest it is not for a comparative stranger to express an opinion. so far however as the men are concerned the reproach is not novel. centuries since, liguria, of which genoa is the principal town, was noted for the cunning and treacherous disposition of its people, who ethnologically differ considerably from their neighbors. in virgil's "æneid" a ligurian chief shows more cunning than courage in a fight with an amazon, and is thus apostrophized before receiving his death-blow from a woman's hand: "in vain, o shifty one, hast thou tried thy hereditary craft." the people of this part of italy form one of a series of ethnological islands; where a remnant, by no means inconsiderable, of an earlier race has survived the invading flood of a stronger people. this old-world race--commonly called the iberian--is characteristically short in stature, dark in hair, eyes, and complexion. representatives of it survive in brittany, wales, ireland, the basque provinces, and other out-of-the-way corners of europe; insulated or pressed back, till they could no farther go, by the advance of the aryan race, by some or other representative of which europe is now peopled. on the ligurian coast, however, as might be expected, in the track of two thousand years of commerce and civilization, the races, however different in origin and formerly naturally hostile, have been almost fused together by intermarriage; and this, at any rate in genoa, seems to have had a fortuitous result in the production of an exceptionally good-looking people, especially in the case of the younger women. i well remember some years since, when driving out on a summer evening on the western side of genoa, to have passed crowds of women, most of them young, returning from work in the factories, and certainly i never saw so large a proportion of beautiful faces as there were among them. genoa for at least two thousand years has been an important center of commerce; though, of course, like most other places, it has not been uniformly prosperous. it fell under the roman power about two centuries before the christian era, the possession of it for a time being disputed with the carthaginians; then it became noted as a seaport town for the commerce of the western part of the mediterranean, it declined and suffered during the decadence and fall of the empire, and then gradually rose into eminence during the middle ages. even in the tenth century genoa was an important community; its citizens, as beseemed men who were hardy sailors, found a natural pleasure in any kind of disturbance; they joined in the crusades, and turned religious enthusiasm to commercial profit by the acquisition of various towns and islands in the east. the rather unusual combination of warrior and merchant, which the genoese of the middle ages present, is no doubt due not only to social character, but also to exceptional circumstances. "the constant invasions of the saracens united the professions of trade and war, and its greatest merchants became also its greatest generals, while its naval captains were also merchants." genoa, as may be supposed, had from the first to contend with two formidable rivals: the one being pisa in its own waters; the other venice, whose citizens were equally anxious for supremacy in the levant and the commerce of the east. with both these places the struggle was long and fierce, but the fortune of war on the whole was distinctly favorable to genoa nearer home, and unfavorable in regard to the more distant foe. pisa was finally defeated in the neighborhood of leghorn, and in the year 1300 had to cede to her enemy a considerable amount of territory, including the island of corsica; while venice, after more than a century of conflict with very varying fortune, at last succeeded in obtaining the supremacy in the eastern mediterranean. the internal history of the city during all this period was not more peaceful than its external. genoa presents the picture of a house divided against itself; and, strange to say, falsifies the proverb by prospering instead of perishing. if there were commonly wars without, there were yet more persistent factions within. guelphs, headed by the families of grimaldi and fieschi, and ghibellines, by those of spinola and doria, indulged in faction-fights and sometimes in civil warfare, until at last some approach to peace was procured by the influence of andrea doria, who, in obtaining the freedom of the state from french control, brought about the adoption of most important constitutional changes, which tended to obliterate the old and sharply divided party lines. yet even he narrowly escaped overthrow from a conspiracy, headed by one of the fieschi; his great-nephew and heir was assassinated, and his ultimate triumph was due rather to a fortunate accident, which removed from the scene the leader of his opponents, than to his personal power. then the tide of prosperity began to turn against the genoese. the turk made himself master of their lands and cities in the east. venice ousted them from the commerce of the levant. war arose with france, and the city itself was captured by that power in the year 1684. the following century was far from being a prosperous time for genoa, and near the close it opened its gates to the republican troops, a subjugation which ultimately resulted in no little suffering to the inhabitants. genoa at that time was encircled on the land side by a double line of fortifications, a considerable portion of which still remains. the outer one, with its associated detached forts, mounted up the inland slopes to an elevation of some hundreds of feet above the sea, and within this is an inner line of much greater antiquity. as it was for those days a place of exceptional strength, its capture became of the first importance, in the great struggle between france and austria, as a preliminary to driving the republican troops out of italy. the city was defended by the french under the command of massena; it was attacked on the land side by the imperialist force, while it was blockaded from the sea by the british fleet. after fifteen days of hard fighting among the neighboring apennines, massena was finally shut up in the city. no less desperate fighting followed around the walls, until at last the defending force was so weakened by its losses that further aggressive operations became impossible on its part, and the siege was converted into a blockade. the results were famine and pestilence. a hundred thousand persons were cooped up within the walls. "from the commencement of the siege the price of provisions had been extravagantly high, and in its latter days grain of any sort could not be had at any cost.... the neighboring rocks within the walls were covered with a famished crowd, seeking, in the vilest animals and the smallest traces of vegetation, the means of assuaging their intolerable pangs.... in the general agony, not only leather and skins of every kind were consumed, but the horror at human flesh was so much abated that numbers were supported on the dead bodies of their fellow citizens. pestilence, as usual, came in the rear of famine, and contagious fevers swept off multitudes, whom the strength of the survivors was unable to inter." before the obstinate defense was ended, and massena, at the end of all his resources, was compelled to capitulate on honorable terms, twenty thousand of the inhabitants had perished from hunger or disease. the end of this terrible struggle brought little profit to the conquerors, for before long the battle of marengo, and the subsequent successes of napoleon in northern italy, led to the city being again surrendered to the french. it had to endure another siege at the end of napoleon's career, for in 1814 it was attacked by english troops under lord william bentinck. fortunately for the inhabitants, the french commander decided to surrender after a few days' severe struggle around the outer defenses. on the settlement of european affairs which succeeded the final fall of napoleon, genoa was annexed to the kingdom of sardinia, and now forms part of united italy; though, it is said, the old instincts of the people give them a theoretic preference for a republican form of government. genoa, like so many of the chief italian towns, has been greatly altered during the last twenty-five years. its harbors have been much enlarged; its defenses have been extended far beyond their ancient limits. down by the water-side, among the narrow streets on the shelving ground that fringes the sea, we are still in old genoa--the city of the merchant princes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but higher up the slopes a new town has sprung up, with broad streets and fine modern houses, and a "corso," bordered by trees and mansions, still retains in its zigzag outline the trace of the old fortifications which enclosed the arm of massena. more than one spot, on or near this elevated road, commands a splendid outlook over the city and neighborhood. from such a position the natural advantages of the site of genoa, the geographical conditions which have almost inevitably determined its history, can be apprehended at a glance. behind us rise steeply, as has been already said, the hills forming the southernmost zone of the apennines. this, no doubt, is a defect in a military point of view, because the city is commanded by so many positions of greater elevation; but this defect was less serious in ancient days, when the range of ordnance was comparatively short; while the difficulty of access which these positions presented, and the obstacles which the mountain barrier of the apennines offered to the advance of an enemy from the comparatively distant plains of piedmont, rendered the city far more secure than it may at first sight have appeared. beneath us lies a deeply recessed bay, in outline like the half of an egg, guarded on the east by a projecting shoulder; while on the western side hills descend, at first rapidly, then more gently, to a point which projects yet farther to the south. this eastern shoulder is converted into a kind of peninsula, rudely triangular in shape, by the valley of the bisagno, a stream of considerable size which thus forms a natural moat for the fortifications on the eastern side of the town. in a bay thus sheltered on three sides by land, vessels were perfectly safe from most of the prevalent winds; and it was only necessary to carry out moles from the western headland and from some point on the eastern shore, to protect them also from storms which might blow from the south. the first defense was run out from the latter side, and still bears the name of the molo vecchio; then the port was enlarged, by carrying out another mole from the end of the western headland; this has been greatly extended, so that the town may now be said to possess an inner and an outer harbor. from the parapet of the corso these topographical facts are seen at a glance, as we look over the tall and densely-massed houses to the busy quays, and the ships which are moored alongside. such a scene cannot fail to be attractive, and the lighthouse, rising high above the western headland, is less monotonous in outline than is usual with such buildings, and greatly enhances the effect of the picture. the city, however, when regarded from this elevated position is rather wanting in variety. we look down over a crowded mass of lofty houses, from which, indeed, two or three domes or towers rise up; but there is not enough diversity in the design of the one, or a sufficiently marked pre-eminence in the others, to afford a prospect which is comparable with that of many other ancient cities. still some variety is given by the trees, which here and there, especially towards the eastern promontory, are interspersed among the houses; while the ligurian coast on the one hand, and the distant summits of the maritime alps on the other, add to the scene a never-failing charm. of the newer part of the town little more need be said. it is like the most modern part of any continental city, and only differs from the majority of these by the natural steepness and irregularity of the site. in genoa, except for a narrow space along the shore, one can hardly find a plot of level ground. now that the old limits of the enceinte have been passed, it is still growing upwards; but beyond and above the farthest houses the hills are still crowned by fortresses, keeping watch and ward over the merchant city. these, of course, are of modern date; but some of them have been reconstructed on the ancient sites, and still encrust, as can be seen at a glance, towers and walls which did their duty in the olden times. for a season, indeed, there was more to be protected than merchandise, for, till lately, genoa was the principal arsenal of the italian kingdom; but this has now been removed to spezzia. italy, however, does not seem to feel much confidence in that immunity from plunder which has been sometimes accorded to "open towns," or in the platitudes of peace-mongers; and appears to take ample precautions that an enemy in command of the sea shall not thrust his hand into a full purse without a good chance of getting nothing better than crushed fingers. but in the lower town we are still in the genoa of the olden time. there is not, indeed, very much to recall the city of the more strictly mediæval epoch; though two churches date from days before the so-called "renaissance," and are good examples of its work. most of what we now see belongs to the genoa of the sixteenth century; or, at any rate, is but little anterior in age to this. the lower town, however, even where its buildings are comparatively modern, still retains in plan--in its narrow, sometimes irregular, streets; in its yet narrower alleys, leading by flights of steps up the steep hill side; in its crowded, lofty houses; in its "huddled up" aspect, for perhaps no single term can better express our meaning--the characteristics of an ancient italian town. in its streets even the summer sun--let the proverb concerning the absence of the sun and the presence of the doctor say what it may--can seldom scorch, and the bitter north wind loses its force among the maze of buildings. open spaces of any kind are rare; the streets, in consequence of their narrowness, are unusually thronged, and thus produce the idea of a teeming population; which, indeed, owing to the general loftiness of the houses, is large in proportion to the area. they are accordingly ill-adapted for the requirements of modern traffic. genoa, like venice, is noted for its _palazzi_--for the sumptuous dwellings inhabited by the burgher aristocracy of earlier days, which are still, in not a few cases, in possession of their descendants. but in style and in position nothing can be more different. we do not refer to the obvious distinction that in the one city the highway is water, in the other it is dry land; or to the fact that buildings in the so-called gothic style are common in venice, but are not to be found among the mansions of genoa. it is rather to this, that the via nuova, which in this respect holds the same place in genoa as the grand canal does in venice, is such a complete contrast to it, that they must be compared by their opposites. the latter is a broad and magnificent highway, affording a full view and a comprehensive survey of the stately buildings which rise from its margin. the former is a narrow street, corresponding in dimensions with one of the less important among the side canals in the other city. it is thus almost impossible to obtain any good idea of the façade of the genoese palazzi. the passing traveller has about as much chance of doing this as he would have of studying the architecture of mincing lane; and even if he could discover a quiet time, like sunday morning in the city, he would still have to strain his neck by staring upwards at the overhanging mass of masonry, and find a complete view of any one building almost impossible. but so far as these palazzi can be seen, how far do they repay examination? it is a common-place with travellers to expatiate on the magnificence of the via nuova, and one or two other streets in genoa. there is an imposing magniloquence in the word palazzo, and a "street of palaces" is a formula which impels many minds to render instant homage. but, speaking for myself, i must own to being no great admirer of this part of genoa; to me the design of these palazzi appears often heavy and oppressive. they are sumptuous rather than dignified, and impress one more with the length of the purse at the architect's command than with the quality of his genius or the fecundity of his conceptions. no doubt there are some fine buildings--the palazzo spinola, the palazzo doria tursi, the palazzo del' universita, and the palazzo balbi, are among those most generally praised. but if i must tell the plain, unvarnished truth, i never felt and never shall feel much enthusiasm for the "city of palaces." it has been some relief to me to find that i am not alone in this heresy, as it will appear to some. for on turning to the pages of fergusson,[1] immediately after penning the above confession, i read for the first time the following passage (and it must be admitted that, though not free from occasional "cranks" as to archæological questions, he was a critic of extensive knowledge and no mean authority):--"when venice adopted the renaissance style, she used it with an aristocratic elegance that relieves even its most fantastic forms in the worst age. in genoa there is a pretentious parvenu vulgarity, which offends in spite of considerable architectural merit. their size, their grandeur, and their grouping may force us to admire the palaces of genoa; but for real beauty or architectural propriety of design they will not stand a moment's comparison with the contemporary or earlier palaces of florence, rome, or venice." farther on he adds very truly, after glancing at the rather illegitimate device by which the façades have been rendered more effective by the use of paint, instead of natural color in the materials employed, as in the older buildings of venice, he adds:--"by far the most beautiful feature of the greater palaces of genoa is their courtyards" (a feature obviously which can only make its full appeal to a comparatively limited number of visitors), "though these, architecturally, consist of nothing but ranges of arcades, resting on attenuated doric pillars. these are generally of marble, sometimes grouped in pairs, and too frequently with a block of an entablature over each, under the springing of the arch; but notwithstanding these defects, a cloistered court is always and inevitably pleasing, and if combined with gardens and scenery beyond, which is generally the case in this city, the effect, as seen from the streets, is so poetic as to disarm criticism. all that dare be said is that, beautiful as they are, with a little more taste and judgment they might have been ten times more so than they are now." [illustration] several of these palazzi contain pictures and art-collections of considerable value, and the interest of those has perhaps enhanced the admiration which they have excited in visitors. one of the most noteworthy is the palazzo brignole sale, commonly called the palazzo rosso, because its exterior is painted red. this has now become a memorial of the munificence of its former owner, the duchess of galliera, a member of the brignole sale family, who, with the consent of her husband and relations, in the year 1874 presented this palace and its contents to the city of genoa, with a revenue sufficient for its maintenance. the palazzo reale, in the via balbi, is one of those where the garden adds a charm to an otherwise not very striking, though large, edifice. this, formerly the property of the durazzo family, was purchased by charles albert, king of sardinia, and has thus become a royal residence. the palazzo ducale, once inhabited by the doges of genoa, has now been converted into public offices, and the palazzo opposite to the church of st. matteo bears an inscription which of itself gives the building an exceptional interest: "senat. cons. andreæ de oria, patriæ liberatori, munus publicum." it is this, the earlier home of the great citizen of genoa, of which rogers has written in the often-quoted lines:- "he left it for a better; and 'tis now a house of trade, the meanest merchandise cumbering its floors. yet, fallen as it is, 'tis still the noblest dwelling--even in genoa! and hadst thou, andrea, lived there to the last, thou hadst done well: for there is that without, that in the wall, which monarchs could not give nor thou take with thee--that which says aloud, it was thy country's gift to her deliverer!" the great statesman lies in the neighboring church, with other members of his family, and over the high altar hangs the sword which was given to him by the pope. the church was greatly altered--embellished it was doubtless supposed--by doria himself; but the old cloisters, dating from the earliest part of the fourteenth century, still remain intact. the grander palazzo which he erected, as an inscription outside still informs us, was in a more open, and doubtless then more attractive, part of the city. in the days of doria it stood in ample gardens, which extended on one side down to a terrace overlooking the harbor, on the other some distance up the hillside. from the back of the palace an elaborate structure of ascending flight of steps in stone led up to a white marble colossal statue of hercules, which from this elevated position seemed to keep watch over the home of the dorias and the port of genoa. all this is sadly changed; the admiral would now find little pleasure in his once stately home. it occupies a kind of peninsula between two streams of twentieth-century civilization. between the terrace wall and the sea the railway connecting the harbor with the main line has intervened, with its iron tracks, its sheds, and its shunting-places--a dreary unsightly outlook, for the adjuncts of a terminus are usually among the most ugly appendages of civilization. the terraced staircase on the opposite side of the palace has been swept away by the main line of the railway, which passes within a few yards of its façade, thus severing the gardens and isolating the shrine of hercules, who looks down forlornly on the result of labors which even he might have deemed arduous, while snorting, squealing engines pass and repass--beasts which to him would have seemed more formidable than lernæan hydra or nemaean lion. the palace follows the usual genoese rule of turning the better side inwards, and offering the less attractive to the world at large. the landward side, which borders a narrow street, and thus, one would conjecture, must from the first have been connected with the upper gardens by a bridge, or underground passage, is plain, almost heavy, in its design, but it does not rise to so great an elevation as is customary with the palazzi in the heart of the city. the side which is turned towards the sea is a much more attractive composition, for it is associated with the usual cloister of loggia which occupies three sides of an oblong. this, as the ground slopes seaward, though on the level of the street outside, stands upon a basement story, and communicates by flights of steps with the lower gardens. the latter are comparatively small, and in no way remarkable; but in the days--not so very distant--when their terraces looked down upon the mediterranean, when the city and its trade were on a smaller scale, when the picturesque side of labor had not yet been extruded by the dust and grime of over-much toil, no place in genoa could have been more pleasant for the evening stroll, or for dreamy repose in some shaded nook during the heat of the day. the palazzo itself shows signs of neglect--the family, i believe, have for some time past ceased to use it for a residence; two or three rooms are still retained in their original condition, but the greater part of the building is let off. in the corridor, near the entrance, members of the doria family, dressed in classic garb, in conformity with the taste which prevailed in the sixteenth century, are depicted in fresco upon the walls. on the roof of the grand saloon jupiter is engaged in overthrowing the titans. these frescoes are the work of perini del vaga, a pupil of raphael. the great admiral, the builder of the palace, is represented among the figures in the corridor, and by an oil painting in the saloon, which contains some remains of sumptuous furniture and a few ornaments of interest. he was a burly man, with a grave, square, powerful face, such a one as often looks out at us from the canvas of titian or of tintoret--a man of kindly nature, but masterful withal; cautious and thoughtful, but a man of action more than of the schools or of the library; one little likely to be swayed by passing impulse or transient emotion, but clear and firm of purpose, who meant to attain his end were it in mortal to command success, and could watch and wait for the time. such men, if one may trust portraits and trust history, were not uncommon in the great epoch when europe was shaking itself free from the fetters of mediæval influences, and was enlarging its mental no less than its physical horizon. such men are the makers of nations, and not only of their own fortunes; they become rarer in the days of frothy stump oratory and hysteric sentiment, when a people babbles as it sinks into senile decrepitude. andrea doria himself--"il principe" as he was styled--had a long and in some respects a checkered career. in his earlier life he obtained distinction as a successful naval commander, and in the curious complications which prevailed in those days among the italian states and their neighbors ultimately became admiral of the french fleet. but he found that genoa would obtain little good from the french king, who was then practically its master; so he transferred his allegiance to the emperor charles, and by his aid expelled from his native city the troops with which he had formerly served. so great was his influence in genoa that he might easily have obtained supreme power; but at this, like a true patriot, he did not grasp, and the constitution, which was adopted under his influence, gradually put an end to the bitter party strife which had for so long been the plague of genoa, and it remained in force until the french revolution. still, notwithstanding the gratitude generally felt for his great services to the state, he experienced in his long life--for he died at the age of ninety-two--the changefulness of human affairs. he had no son, and his heir and grand-nephew--a young man--was unpopular, and, as is often the case, the sapling was altogether inferior in character to the withering tree. the members of another great family--the fieschi--entered into a conspiracy, and collected a body of armed men on the pretext of an expedition against the corsairs who for so long were the pests of the mediterranean. the outbreak was well planned; on new year's night, in the year 1547, the chief posts in the city were seized. doria himself was just warned in time, and escaped capture; but his heir was assassinated, and his enemies seemed to have triumphed. but their success was changed to failure by an accident. count fiescho in passing along a plank to a galley in the harbor made a false step, and fell into the sea. in those days the wearing of armor added to the perils of the deep; the count sank like a stone, and so left the conspirators without a leader exactly at the most critical moment. they were thus before long defeated and dispersed, and had to experience the truth of the proverb, "who breaks pays," for in those days men felt little sentimental tenderness for leaders of sedition and disturbers of the established order. the fieschi were exiled, and their palace was razed to the ground. so the old admiral returned to his home and his terrace-walk overlooking the sea, until at last his long life ended, and they buried him with his fathers in the church of s. matteo. not far from the doria palace is the memorial to another admiral, of fame more world-wide than that of doria. in the open space before the railway station--a building, a façade of which is not without architectural merit--rises a handsome monument in honor of christopher columbus. he was not strictly a native of the city, but he was certainly born on genoese soil, and, as it seems to be now agreed, at cogoleto, a small village a few miles west of the city. he was not, however, able to convince the leaders of his own state that there were wide parts of the world yet to be discovered; and it is a well-known story how for a long time he preached to deaf ears, and found, like most heralds of startling physical facts, his most obstinate opponents among the ecclesiastics of his day. spain at last, after genoa and portugal and england had all refused, placed columbus in command of a voyage of discovery; and on spanish ground also--in neglect and comparative poverty, worn out by toil and anxieties--the great explorer ended his checkered career. genoa, however, though inattentive to the comparatively obscure enthusiast, has not failed to pay honor to the successful discoverer; and is glad to catch some reflected light from the splendor of successes to the aid of which she did not contribute. in this respect, however, the rest of the world cannot take up their parable at her; men generally find that on the whole it is less expensive, and certainly less troublesome, to build the tombs of the prophets, instead of honoring them while alive; then, indeed, whether bread be asked or no, a stone is often given. so now the effigy of columbus stands on high among exotic plants, where all the world can see, for it is the first thing encountered by the traveller as he quits the railway station. one of the most characteristic--if not one of the sweetest--places in genoa is the long street, which, under more than one name, intervenes between the last row of houses in the town and the harbor. from the latter it is, indeed, divided by a line of offices and arched halls; these are covered by a terrace-roof and serve various purposes more or less directly connected with the shipping. the front walls of houses which rise high on the landward side are supported by rude arches. thus, as is so common in italian towns, there is a broad foot-walk, protected alike from sun and rain, replacing the "ground-floor front," with dark shops at the back, and stalls, for the sale of all sorts of odds and ends, pitched in the spaces between the arches. in many towns these arcades are often among the most ornamental features; but in genoa, though not without a certain quaintness, they are so rude in design and construction that they hardly deserve this title. the old dogana, one of the buildings in the street, gives a good idea of the commercial part of genoa before the days of steam, and has a considerable interest of its own. in the first place, it is a standing memorial of the bitter feud between genoa and venice, for it is built with the stones of a castle which, being captured by the one from the other, was pulled down and shipped to genoa in the year 1262. again, within its walls was the banca di san georgio, which had its origin in a municipal debt incurred in order to equip an expedition to stop the forays of a family named grimaldi, who had formed a sort of cave of adullam at monaco. the institution afterwards prospered, and held in trust most of the funds for charitable purposes, till "the french passed their sponge over the accounts, and ruined all the individuals in the community." it has also an indirect connection with english history, for on the defeat of the grimaldi many of their retainers entered the service of france, and were the genoese bowmen who fought at cressy. lastly, against its walls the captured chains of the harbor of pisa were suspended for nearly six centuries, for they were only restored to their former owners a comparatively few years since. turning up from this part of the city we thread narrow streets, in which many of the principal shops are still located. we pass, in a busy piazza, the _loggia dei banchi borsa_--the old exchange--a quaint structure of the end of the sixteenth century, standing on a raised platform; and proceed from it into the _via degli orefici_--a street just like one of the lanes which lead from cheapside to cannon street, if, indeed, it be not still narrower, but full of tempting shops. genoa is noted for its work in coral and precious metals, but the most characteristic, as all visitors know, is a kind of filigree work in gold or silver, which is often of great delicacy and beauty, and is by no means so costly as might be anticipated from the elaborate workmanship. the most notable building in genoa, anterior to the days when the architecture of the renaissance was in favor, is the cathedral, which is dedicated to s. lorenzo. the western façade, which is approached by a broad flight of steps, is the best exposed to view, the rest of the building being shut in rather closely after the usual genoese fashion. it is built of alternating courses of black and white marble, the only materials employed for mural decoration, so far as i remember, in the city. the western façade in its lower part is a fine example of "pointed" work, consisting of a triple portal which, for elegance of design and richness of ornamentation, could not readily be excelled. it dates from about the year 1307, when the cathedral was almost rebuilt. the latter, as a whole, is a very composite structure, for parts of an earlier romanesque cathedral still remain, as in the fine "marble" columns of the nave; and important alterations were made at a much later date. these, to which belongs the mean clerestory, painted in stripes of black and white, to resemble the banded courses of stone below, are generally most unsatisfactory; and here, as in so many other buildings, one is compelled, however reluctantly, "to bless the old and ban the new." the most richly decorated portion of the interior is the side chapel, constructed at the end of the fifteenth century, and dedicated to st. john the baptist; here his relics are enshrined for the reverence of the faithful and, as the guide-books inform us, are placed in a magnificent silver-gilt shrine, which is carried in solemn procession on the day of his nativity. we are also informed that women, as a stigma for the part which the sex played in the baptist's murder, are only permitted to enter the chapel once in a year. this is not by any means the only case where the church of rome gives practical expression to its decided view as to which is the superior sex. the cathedral possesses another great, though now unhappily mutilated, treasure in the _sacro catino_. this, in the first place, was long supposed to have been carved from a single emerald; in the next, it was a relic of great antiquity and much sanctity; though as to its precise claims to honor in this respect authorities differed. according to one, it had been a gift from the queen of sheba to solomon; according to another, it had contained the paschal lamb at the last supper; while a third asserted that in this dish joseph of arimathea had caught the blood which flowed from the pierced side of the crucified saviour. of its great antiquity there can at least be no doubt, for it was taken by the genoese when they plundered cæsarea so long since as the year 1101, and was then esteemed the most precious thing in the spoil. the material is a green glass--a conclusion once deemed so heretical that any experiment on the _catino_ was forbidden on pain of death. as regards its former use, no more can be said than that it might possibly be as old as the christian era. it is almost needless to say that napoleon carried it away to paris; but the worst result of this robbery was that when restitution was made after the second occupation of that city, the _catino_, through some gross carelessness, was so badly packed that it was broken on the journey back, and has been pieced together by a gold-setting of filigree, according to the guide-books. an inscription in the nave supplies us with an interesting fact in the early history of genoa which perhaps ought not to be omitted. it is that the city was founded by one janus, a great grandson of noah; and that another janus, after the fall of troy, also settled in it. colonists from that ill-fated town really seem to have distributed themselves pretty well over the known world. more than one of the smaller churches of genoa is of archæological interest, and the more modern fabric, called l'annunziata, is extremely rich in its internal decorations, though these are more remarkable for their sumptuousness than for their good taste. but one structure calls for some notice in any account of the city. this is the campo santo, or burial-place of genoa, situated at some distance without the walls in the valley of the bisagno. a large tract of land on the slope which forms the right bank of that stream has been converted into a cemetery, and was laid out on its present plan rather more than twenty-five years since. extensive open spaces are enclosed within and divided by corridors with cloisters; terraces also, connected by flights of steps, lead up to a long range of buildings situated some distance above the river, in the center of which is a chapel crowned with a dome, supported internally by large columns of polished black como marble. the bodies of the poorer people are buried in the usual way in the open ground of the cemetery, and the floor of the corridors appears to cover a continuous series of vaults, closed, as formerly in our churches, with great slabs of stone; but a very large number of the dead rest above the ground in vaults constructed on a plan which has evidently been borrowed from catacombs like those of rome. there is, however, this difference, that in the latter the "loculi," or separate compartments to contain the corpses, were excavated in the rock, while here they are constructed entirely of masonry. in both cases the "loculus" is placed with its longer axis parallel to the outer side, as was occasionally the method in the rock-hewn tombs of palestine, instead of having an opening at the narrower end, so that the corpse, whether coffined or not, lies in the position of a sleeper in the berth of a ship. after a burial, the loculus, as in the catacombs, is closed, and an inscription placed on a slab outside. thus in the campo santo at genoa we walk through a gallery of tombs. on either hand are ranges of low elongated niches, rising tier above tier, each bearing a long white marble tablet, surrounded by a broad border of dark serpentine breccia. the interior generally is faced with white marble, which is toned down by the interspaces of the darker material, and the effect produced by these simple monumental corridors, these silent records of those who have rested from their labors, is impressive, if somewhat melancholy. in the cloisters, as a rule, the more sumptuous memorials are to be found. here commonly sections of the wall are given up to the monuments of a family, the vaults, as i infer, being underneath the pavement. these memorials are often elaborate in design, and costly in their materials. they will be, and are, greatly admired by those to whose minds sumptuousness is the chief element in beauty, and rather second-rate execution of conceptions distinctly third-rate gives no offense. others, however, will be chiefly impressed with the inferiority of modern statuary to the better work of classic ages, and will doubt whether the more ambitious compositions which met our eyes in these galleries are preferable to the simple dignity of the mediæval altar tomb, and the calm repose of its recumbent figure. the drive to the campo santo, in addition to affording a view of one of the more perfect parts of the old defensive enclosure of genoa, of which the porta chiappia, one of the smaller gates, may serve as an example, passes within sight, though at some distance below, one of the few relics of classic time which the city has retained. this is the aqueduct which was constructed by the romans. some portions of it, so far as can be seen from below, appear to belong to the original structure; but, as it is still in use, it has been in many parts more or less reconstructed and modernized. the environs of genoa are pleasant. on both sides, particularly on the eastern, are country houses with gardens. the western for a time is less attractive. the suburb of sanpierdarena is neither pretty nor interesting; but at conigliano, and still more at sestre ponente, the grimy finger-marks of commerce become less conspicuous, and nature is not wholly expelled by the two-pronged fork of mechanism. pegli, still farther west, is a very attractive spot, much frequented in the summer time for sea-bathing. on this part of the coast the hills in places draw near to the sea, and crags rise from the water; the rocks are of interest in more than one respect to the geologist. one knoll of rock rising from the sand in the bay of pra is crowned by an old fortress, and at pegli itself are one or two villas of note. of these the gardens of the villa pallavicini commonly attract visitors. they reward some by stalactite grottoes and "sheets of water with boats, under artificial caverns, a chinese pagoda, and an egyptian obelisk;" others will be more attracted by the beauty of the vegetation, for palms and oleanders, myrtles, and camellias, with many semi-tropical plants, flourish in the open air. we may regard genoa as the meeting-place of the two rivieras. the coast to the west--the riviera di ponente--what has now, by the cession of nice, become in part french soil, is the better known; but that to the east, the riviera di levante, though less accessible on the whole, and without such an attractive feature as the corniche road, in the judgment of some is distinctly the more beautiful. there is indeed a road which, for a part of the way, runs near the sea; but the much more indented character of the coast frequently forces it some distance inland, and ultimately it has to cross a rather considerable line of hills in order to reach spezzia. the outline of the coast, indeed, is perhaps the most marked feature of difference between the two rivieras. the hills on the eastern side descend far more steeply to the water than they do upon the western. they are much more sharply furrowed with gullies and more deeply indented by inlets of the sea; thus the construction of a railway from genoa to spezzia has been a work involving no slight labor. there are, it is stated, nearly fifty tunnels between the two towns, and it is strictly true that for a large part of the distance north of the latter place the train is more frequently under than above ground. here it is actually an advantage to travel by the slowest train that can be found, for this may serve as an epitome of the journey by an express: "out of a tunnel; one glance, between rocks and olive-groves, up a ravine, into which a picturesque old village is wedged; another glance down the same to the sea, sparkling in the sunlight below; a shriek from the engine, and another plunge into darkness." so narrow are some of these gullies, up which, however, a village climbs, that, if i may trust my memory, i have seen a train halted at a station with the engine in the opening of one tunnel and the last car not yet clear of another. but the coast, when explored, is full of exquisite nooks, and here and there, where by chance the hills slightly recede, or a larger valley than usual comes down to the sea, towns of some size are situated, from which, as halting-places, the district might be easily explored, for trains are fairly frequent, and the distances are not great. for a few miles from genoa the coast is less hilly than it afterwards becomes; nevertheless, the traveller is prepared for what lies before him by being conducted from the main station, on the west side of genoa, completely beneath the city to near its eastern wall. then nervi is passed, which, like pegli, attracts not a few summer visitors, and is a bright and sunny town, with pleasant gardens and villas. recco follows, also bright and cheerful, backed by the finely-outlined hills, which form the long promontory enclosing the western side of the bay of rapallo. tunnels and villages, as the railway now plunges into the rock, now skirts the margin of some little bay, lead first to rapallo and then to chiavari, one with its slender campanile, the other with its old castle. the luxuriance of the vegetation in all this district cannot fail to attract notice. the slopes of the hills are grey with olives; oranges replace apples in the orchards, and in the more sheltered nooks we espy the paler gold of the lemon. here are great spiky aloes, there graceful feathering palms; here pines of southern type, with spreading holm-oaks, and a dozen other evergreen shrubs. glimpse after glimpse of exquisite scenery flashes upon us as we proceed to spezzia, but, as already said, its full beauty can only be appreciated by rambling among the hills or boating along the coast. there is endless variety, but the leading features are similar: steep hills furrowed by ravines, craggy headlands and sheltered coves; villages sometimes perched high on a shoulder, sometimes nestling in a gully; sometimes a campanile, sometimes a watch-tower; slopes, here clothed with olive groves, here with their natural covering of pine and oak scrub, of heath, myrtle, and strawberry-trees. a change also in the nature of the rock diversifies the scenery, for between framura and bonasola occurs a huge mass of serpentine, which recalls, in its peculiar structure and tints, the crags near the lizard in england. this rock is extensively quarried in the neighborhood of levanto, and from that little port many blocks are shipped. spezzia itself has a remarkable situation. a large inlet of the sea runs deep into the land, parallel with the general trend of the hills, and almost with that of the coast-line. the range which shelters it on the west narrows as it falls to the headland of porto venere, and is extended yet farther by rocky islands; while on the opposite coast, hills no less, perhaps yet more, lofty, protect the harbor from the eastern blasts. in one direction only is it open to the wind, and against this the comparative narrowness of the inlet renders the construction of artificial defenses possible. at the very head of this deeply embayed sheet of water is a small tract of level ground--the head, as it were, of a valley--encircled by steep hills. on this little plain, and by the waterside, stands spezzia. formerly it was a quiet country town, a small seaport with some little commerce; but when italy ceased to be a geographical expression, and became practically one nation, spezzia was chosen, wisely it must be admitted, as the site of the chief naval arsenal. a single glance shows its natural advantages for such a purpose. access from the land must always present difficulties, and every road can be commanded by forts, perched on yet more elevated positions; while a hostile fleet, as it advances up the inlet, must run the gauntlet of as many batteries as the defenders can build. further, the construction of a breakwater across the middle of the channel at once has been a protection from the storms, and has compelled all who approach to pass through straits commanded by cannon. the distance of the town from its outer defenses and from the open sea seems enough to secure it even from modern ordnance; so that, until the former are crushed, it cannot be reached by projectiles. but it must be confessed that the change has not been without its drawbacks. the spezzia of to-day may be a more prosperous town than the spezzia of a quarter of a century since, but it has lost some of its beauty. a twentieth-century fortress adds no charm to the scenery, and does not crown a hill so picturesquely as did a mediæval castle. houses are being built, roads are being made, land is being reclaimed from the sea for the construction of quays. thus the place has a generally untidy aspect; there is a kind of ragged selvage to town and sea, which, at present, on a near view, is very unsightly. moreover, the buildings of an arsenal can hardly be picturesque or magnificent; and great factories, more or less connected with them, have sprung up in the neighborhood, from which rise tall red brick chimneys, the campaniles of the twentieth century. the town itself was never a place of any particular interest; it has neither fine churches nor old gateways nor picturesque streets--a ruinous fort among the olive groves overlooking the streets is all that can claim to be ancient--so that its growth has not caused the loss of any distinctive feature--unless it be a grove of old oleanders, which were once a sight to see in summer time. many of these have now disappeared, perhaps from natural decay; and the survivors are mixed with orange trees. these, during late years, have been largely planted about the town. in one of the chief streets they are growing by the side of the road, like planes or chestnuts in other towns. the golden fruit and the glossy leaves, always a delight to see, appear to possess a double charm by contrast with the arid flags and dusty streets. ripe oranges in dozens, in hundreds, all along by the pathway, and within two or three yards of the pavement! are the boys of spezzia exceptionally virtuous? or are these golden apples of the hesperides a special pride of the populace, and does "father stick" still rule in home and school, and is this immunity the result of physical coercion rather than of moral suasion? be this as it may, i have with mine own eyes seen golden oranges by hundreds hanging on the trees in the streets of spezzia, and would be glad to know how long they would remain in a like position in those of an english town, among "the most law-abiding people in the universe!" but if the vicinity of the town has lost some of its ancient charm, if modern spezzia reminds us too much, now of woolwich, now of a "new neighborhood" on the outskirts of london, we have but to pass into the uplands, escaping from the neighborhood of forts, to find the same beauties as the mountains of this coast ever afford. there the sugar-cane and the vine, the fig and the olive cease, though the last so abounds that one might suppose it an indigenous growth; there the broken slopes are covered with scrub oak and dwarf pine; there the myrtle blossoms, hardly ceasing in the winter months; there the strawberry-tree shows its waxen flowers, and is bright in season with its rich crimson berries. even the villages add a beauty to the landscape--at any rate, when regarded from a distance; some are perched high up on the shoulders of hills, with distant outlooks over land and sea; others lie down by the water's edge in sheltered coves, beneath some ruined fort, which in olden time protected the fisher-folk from the raids of corsairs. such are terenza and lerici, looking at each other across the waters of the little "porto;" and many another village, in which grey and white and pink tinted houses blend into one pleasant harmony of color. for all this part of the coast is a series of rocky headlands and tiny bays, one succession of quiet nooks, to which the sea alone forms a natural highway. not less irregular, not less sequestered, is the western coast of the bay of spezzia, which has been already mentioned. here, at porto venere, a little village still carries us back in its name to classic times; and the old church on the rugged headland stands upon a site which was once not unfitly occupied by a temple of the seaborn goddess. the beauty of the scene is enhanced by a rocky wooded island, the isola palmeria, which rises steeply across a narrow strait; though the purpose to which it has been devoted--a prison for convicts--neither adds to its charm nor awakens pleasant reflections. to some minds also the harbor itself, busy and bright as the scene often is, will suggest more painful thoughts than it did in olden days. for it is no preacher of "peace at any price," and is a daily witness that millennial days are still far away from the present epoch. here may be seen at anchor the modern devices for naval war: great turret-ships and ironclads, gunboats and torpedo launches--evils, necessary undoubtedly, but evils still; outward and visible signs of the burden of taxation, which is cramping the development of italy, and is indirectly the heavy price which it has to pay for entering the ranks of the great powers of europe. these are less picturesque than the old line-of-battle ships, with their high decks, their tall masts, and their clouds of canvas; still, nothing can entirely spoil the harbor of spezzia, and even these floating castles group pleasantly in the distance with the varied outline of hills and headlands, which is backed at last, if we look southward, by the grand outline of a group of veritable mountains--the apuan alps. ix the tuscan coast shelley's last months at lerici--story of his death--carrara and its marble quarries--pisa--its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings--the cloisters of the campo santo--napoleon's life on elba--origin of the etruscans--the ruins of tarquinii--civita vecchia, the old port of rome--ostia. the bay of spezzia is defined sharply enough on its western side by the long, hilly peninsula which parts it from the mediterranean, but as this makes only a small angle with the general trend of the coast-line, its termination is less strongly marked on the opposite side. of its beauties we have spoken in an earlier article, but there is a little town at the southern extremity which, in connection with the coast below, has a melancholy interest to every lover of english literature. here, at lerici, shelley spent what proved to be the last months of his life. the town itself, once strongly fortified by its pisan owners against their foes of genoa on the one side and lucca on the other, is a picturesque spot. the old castle crowns a headland, guarding the little harbor and overlooking the small but busy town. at a short distance to the southeast is the casa magni, once a jesuit seminary, which was occupied by shelley. looking across the beautiful gulf to the hills on its opposite shore and the island of porto venere, but a few miles from the grand group of the carrara mountains, in the middle of the luxuriant scenery of the eastern riviera, the house, though in itself not very attractive, was a fit home for a lover of nature. but shelley's residence within its walls was too soon cut short. there are strange tales (like those told with bated breath by old nurses by the fireside) that as the closing hour approached the spirits of the unseen world took bodily form and became visible to the poet's eye; tales of a dark-robed figure standing by his bedside beckoning him to follow; of a laughing child rising from the sea as he walked by moonlight on the terrace, clapping its hands in glee; and of other warnings that the veil which parted him from the spirit world was vanishing away. shelley delighted in the sea. on the 1st of july he left lerici for leghorn in a small sailing vessel. on the 8th he set out to return, accompanied only by his friend, mr. williams, and an english lad. the afternoon was hot and sultry, and as the sun became low a fearful squall burst upon the neighboring sea. what happened no one exactly knows, but they never came back to the shore. day followed day, and the great sea kept its secret; but at last, on the 22d, the corpse of shelley was washed up near viareggio and that of williams near bocca lerici, three miles away. it was not till three weeks afterwards that the body of the sailor lad came ashore. probably the felucca had either capsized or had been swamped at the first break of the storm; but when it was found, some three months afterwards, men said that it looked as if it had been run down, and even more ugly rumors got abroad that this was no accident, but the work of some italians, done in the hope of plunder, as it was expected that the party had in charge a considerable sum of money. the bodies were at first buried in the sand with quicklime; but at that time the tuscan law required "any object then cast ashore to be burned, as a precaution against plague," so, by the help of friends, the body of shelley was committed to the flames "with fuel and frankincense, wine, salt, and oil, the accompaniments of a greek cremation," in the presence of byron leigh hunt, and trelawny. the corpse of williams had been consumed in like fashion on the previous day. "it was a glorious day and a splendid prospect; the cruel and calm sea before, the appennines behind. a curlew wheeled close to the pyre, screaming, and would not be driven away; the flames arose golden and towering." the inurned ashes were entombed, as everyone knows, in the protestant burial ground at rome by the side of keats' grave, near the pyramid of cestius. much as there was to regret in shelley's life, there was more in his death, for such genius as his is rare, and if the work of springtide was so glorious, what might have been the summer fruitage? as the gulf of spezzia is left behind, the magra broadens out into an estuary as it enters the sea, the river which formed in olden days the boundary between liguria and etruria. five miles from the coast, and less than half the distance from the river, is sarzana, the chief city of the province, once fortified, and still containing a cathedral of some interest. it once gave birth to a pope, nicholas v., the founder of the vatican library, and in the neighborhood the family of the buonapartes had their origin, a branch of it having emigrated to corsica. sarzana bore formerly the name of luna nova, as it had replaced another luna which stood near to the mouth of the river. this was in ruins even in the days of lucan, and now the traveller from saranza to pisa sees only "a strip of low, grassy land intervening between him and the sea. here stood the ancient city. there is little enough to see. beyond a few crumbling tombs and a fragment or two of roman ruins, nothing remains of luna. the fairy scene described by rutilus, so appropriate to the spot which bore the name of the virgin-queen of heaven, the 'fair white walls' shaming with their brightness the untrodden snow, the smooth, many-tinted rocks overrun with laughing lilies, if not the pure creation of the poet, have now vanished from the sight. vestiges of an amphitheater, of a semicircular building which may be a theater, of a circus, a _piscina_, and fragments of columns, pedestals for statues, blocks of pavement and inscriptions, are all that luna has now to show." but all the while the grand group of the carrara hills is in view, towering above a lowland region which rolls down towards the coast. a branch line now leads from avenza, a small seaport town from which the marble is shipped, to the town of carrara, through scenery of singular beauty. the shelving banks and winding slopes of the foreground hills are clothed with olives and oaks and other trees; here and there groups of houses, white and grey and pink, cluster around a campanile tower on some coign of vantage, while at the back rises the great mountain wall of the apuan alps, with its gleaming crags, scarred, it must be admitted, rather rudely and crudely by its marble quarries, though the long slopes of screes beneath these gashes in the more distant views almost resemble the alpine snows. the situation of the town is delightful, for it stands at the entrance of a rapidly narrowing valley, in a sufficiently elevated position to command a view of this exquisitely rich lowland as it shelves and rolls down to the gleaming sea. nor is the place itself devoid of interest. one of its churches at least, s. andrea, is a really handsome specimen of the architecture of this part of italy in the thirteenth century, but the quarries dominate, and their products are everywhere. here are the studios of sculptors and the ateliers of workmen. the fair white marble here, like silver in the days of solomon, is of little account; it paves the street, builds the houses, serves even for the basest uses, and is to be seen strewn or piled up everywhere to await dispersal by the trains to more distant regions. beyond the streets of carrara, in the direction of the mountains, carriage roads no longer exist. lanes wind up the hills here and there in rather bewildering intricacy, among vines and olive groves, to hamlets and quarries; one, indeed, of rather larger size and more fixity of direction, keeps for a time near the river, if indeed the stream which flows by carrara be worthy of that name, except when the storms are breaking or the snows are melting upon the mountains. but all these lanes alike terminate in a quarry, are riven with deep ruts, ploughed up like a field by the wheels of the heavy wagons that bring down the great blocks of marble. one meets these grinding and groaning on their way, drawn by yokes of dove-colored oxen (longer than that with which elisha was ploughing when the older prophet cast his mantle upon his shoulders), big, meek-looking beasts, mild-eyed and melancholy as the lotus-eaters. to meet them is not always an unmixed pleasure, for the lanes are narrow, and there is often no room to spare; how the traffic is regulated in some parts is a problem which i have not yet solved. carrara would come near to being an earthly paradise were it not for the mosquitos, which are said to be such that they would have made even the garden of eden untenable, especially to its first inhabitants. of them, however, i cannot speak, for i have never slept in the town, or even visited it at the season when this curse of the earth is at its worst; but i have no hesitation in asserting that the mountains of carrara are not less beautiful in outline than those of any part of the main chain of the alps of like elevation, while they are unequalled in color and variety of verdure. to avenza succeeds massa, a considerable town, beautifully situated among olive-clad heights, which are spotted with villas and densely covered with foliage. like carrara, it is close to the mountains, and disputes with carrara for the reputation of its quarries. this town was once the capital of a duchy, massa-carrara, and the title was borne by a sister of napoleon i. her large palace still remains; her memory should endure, though not precisely in honor, for according to mr. hare, she pulled down the old cathedral to improve the view from her windows. but if massa is beautiful, so is pietra santa, a much smaller town enclosed by old walls and singularly picturesque in outline. it has a fine old church, with a picturesque campanile, which, though slightly more modern than the church itself, has seen more than four centuries. the piazza, with the town hall, this church and another one, is a very characteristic feature. in the baptistry of one of the churches are some bronzes by donatello. about half a dozen miles away, reached by a road which passes through beautiful scenery, are the marble quarries of seravezza, which were first opened by michael angelo, and are still in full work. there is only one drawback to travelling by railway in this region; the train goes too fast. let it be as slow as it will, and it can be very slow, we can never succeed in coming to a decision as to which is the most picturesquely situated place or the most lovely view. comparisons notoriously are odious, but delightful, as undoubtedly is the riviera di ponenta to me, the riviera di levante seems even more lovely. after pietra santa, however, the scenery becomes less attractive, the apuan alps begin to be left behind, and a wider strip of plain parts the apennines from the sea. this, which is traversed by the railway, is in itself flat, stale, though perhaps not unprofitable to the husbandman. viareggio, mentioned on a previous page, nestles among its woods of oaks and pines, a place of some little note as a health resort; and then the railway after emerging from the forest strikes away from the sea, and crosses the marshy plains of the serchio, towards the banks of the arno. [illustration] it now approaches the grand group of ecclesiastical buildings which rise above the walls of pisa. as this town lies well inland, being six miles from the sea, we must content ourselves with a brief mention. but a long description is needless, for who does not know of its cathedral and its campo santo, of its baptistry and its leaning tower? there is no more marvelous or complete group of ecclesiastical buildings in europe, all built of the white marble of carrara, now changed by age into a delicate cream color, but still almost dazzling in the glory of the mid-day sun, yet never so beautiful as when walls, arches, and pinnacles are aglow at its rising, or flushed at its setting. in the cloisters of the campo santo you may see monuments which range over nearly five centuries, and contrast ancient and modern art; the frescoes on their walls, though often ill preserved, and not seldom of little merit, possess no small interest as illustrating medieval notions of a gospel of love and peace. beneath their roof at the present time are sheltered a few relics of roman and etruscan days which will repay examination. the very soil also of this god's acre is not without an interest, for when the holy land was lost to the christians, fifty-and-three shiploads of earth were brought hither from jerusalem that the dead of pisa might rest in ground which had been sanctified by the visible presence of their redeemer. the cathedral is a grand example of the severe but stately style which was in favor about the end of the eleventh century, for it was consecrated in the year 1118. it commemorates a great naval victory won by the pisans, three years before the battle of hastings, and the columns which support the arches of the interior were at once the spoils of classic buildings and the memorials of pisan victories. the famous leaning tower, though later in date, harmonizes well in general style with the cathedral. its position, no doubt, attracts most attention, for to the eye it seems remarkably insecure, but one cannot help wishing that the settlement had never occurred, for the slope is sufficient to interfere seriously with the harmony of the group. the baptistry also harmonizes with the cathedral, though it was not begun till some forty years after the latter was completed, and not only was more than a century in building, but also received some ornamental additions in the fourteenth century. but though this cathedral group is the glory and the crown of pisa, the best monument of its proudest days, there are other buildings of interest in the town itself; and the broad quays which flank the arno on each side, the lungarno by name, which form a continuous passage from one end of the town to the other, together with the four bridges which link its older and newer part, are well worthy of more than a passing notice. the land bordering the arno between pisa and its junction with the mediterranean has no charm for the traveller, however it may commend itself to the farmer. a few miles south of the river's mouth is leghorn, and on the eleven miles' journey by rail from it to pisa the traveller sees as much, and perhaps more, than he could wish of the delta of the arno. it is a vast alluvial plain, always low-lying, in places marshy; sometimes meadow land, sometimes arable. here and there are slight and inconspicuous lines of dunes, very probably the records of old sea margins as the river slowly encroached upon the mediterranean, which are covered sometimes with a grove of pines. leghorn is not an old town, and has little attraction for the antiquarian or the artist. in fact, i think it, for its size, the most uninteresting town, whether on the sea or inland, that i have entered in italy. brindisi is a dreary hole, but it has one or two objects of interest. bari is not very attractive, but it has two churches, the architecture of which will repay long study; but leghorn is almost a miracle of commonplace architecture and of dullness. of course there is a harbor, of course there are ships, of course there is the sea, and all these possess a certain charm; but really this is about as small as it can be under the circumstances. the town was a creation of the medici, "the masterpiece of that dynasty." in the middle of the sixteenth century it was an insignificant place, with between seven and eight hundred inhabitants. but it increased rapidly when the princes of that family took the town in hand and made it a cave of adullam, whither the discontented or oppressed from other lands might resort: jews and moors from spain and portugal, escaping from persecution; roman catholics from england, oppressed by the retaliatory laws of elizabeth; merchants from marseilles, seeking refuge from civil war. thus fostered, it was soon thronged by men of talent and energy; it rapidly grew into an important center of commerce, and now the town with its suburbs contains nearly a hundred thousand souls. leghorn is intersected by canals, sufficiently so to have been sometimes called a "little venice," and has been fortified, but as the defenses belong to the system of vauban, they add little to either the interest or the picturesqueness of the place. parts of the walls and the citadel remain, the latter being enclosed by a broad water-ditch. the principal street has some good shops, and there are two fairly large piazzas; in one, bearing the name of carlo alberto, are statues of heroic size to the last grand duke and to his predecessor. the inscription on the latter is highly flattering; but that on the former states that the citizens had come to the conclusion that the continuance of the austro-lorenese dynasty was incompatible with the good order and happiness of tuscany, and had accordingly voted union with italy. the other piazza now bears victor emmanuel's name; in it are a building which formerly was a royal palace, the town hall, and the cathedral; the last a fair-sized church, but a rather plain specimen of the renaissance style, with some handsome columns of real marble and a large amount of imitation, painted to match. there are also some remains of the old fortifications, though they are not so very old, by the side of the inner or original harbor. as this in course of time proved too shallow for vessels of modern bulk, the porto nuovo, or outer harbor, was begun nearly fifty years since, and is protected from the waves by a semicircular mole. among the other lions of the place, and they are all very small, is a statue of duke ferdinand i., one of the founders of leghorn, with four turkish slaves about the pedestal. the commerce of leghorn chiefly consists of grain, cotton, wool, and silk, and is carried on mainly with the eastern ports of the mediterranean. there is also an important shipbuilding establishment. it has, however, one link of interest with english literature, for in the protestant cemetery was buried tobias smollet. there is a pleasant public walk by the sea margin outside the town, from where distant views of elba and other islands are obtained. the hilly ground south of the broad valley of the arno is of little interest, and for a considerable distance a broad strip of land, a level plain of cornfields and meadow, intervenes between the sea and the foot of the hills. here and there long lines of pine woods seem almost to border the former; the rounded spurs of the latter are thickly wooded, but are capped here and there by grey villages, seemingly surrounded by old walls, and are backed by the bolder outlines of the more distant apennines. for many a long mile this kind of scenery will continue, this flat, marshy, dyke-intersected plain, almost without a dwelling upon it, though village after village is seen perched like epaulettes on the low shoulders of the hills. it is easy to understand why they are placed in this apparently inconvenient position, for we are at the beginning of the tuscan maremma, a district scourged by malaria during the summer months, and none too healthy, if one may judge by the looks of the peasants, during any time of the year. but one cannot fail to observe that towards the northern extremity houses have become fairly common on this plain, and many of them are new, so that the efforts which have been made to improve the district by draining seem to have met with success. for some time the seaward views are very fine; comparatively near to the coast a hilly island rises steeply from the water and is crowned with a low round tower. behind this lies elba, a long, bold, hilly ridge, and far away, on a clear day, the great mountain mass of corsica looms blue in the distance. elba has its interests for the geologist, its beauties for the lover of scenery. it has quarries of granite and serpentine, but its fame rests on its iron mines, which have been noted from very early times and from which fine groups of crystals of hematite are still obtained. so famed was it in the days of the roman empire as to call forth from virgil the well-known line, "insula inexhaustis chalybum generosa metallis." when these, its masters, had long passed away, it belonged in turn to pisa, to genoa, to lucca, and, after others, to the grand duke cosimo of florence. then it became neapolitan, and at last french. as everyone knows, it was assigned to napoleon after his abdication, and from may, 1814, to february, 1815, he enjoyed the title of king of elba. then, while discontent was deepening in france, and ambassadors were disputing round the congress-table at vienna, he suddenly gave the slip to the vessels which were watching the coast and landed in france to march in triumph to paris, to be defeated at waterloo, and to die at st. helena. the island is for the most part hilly, indeed almost mountainous, for it rises at one place nearly three thousand feet above the sea. the valleys and lower slopes are rich and fertile, producing good fruit and fair wine, and the views are often of great beauty. the fisheries are of some importance, especially that of the tunny. porto ferrajo, the chief town, is a picturesquely situated place, on the northern side, which still retains the forts built by cosimo i. to defend his newly obtained territory, and the mansion, a very modest palace, inhabited by napoleon. "it must be confessed my isle is very little," was napoleon's remark when for the first time he looked around over his kingdom from a mountain summit above porto ferrajo. little it is in reality, for the island is not much more than fifteen miles long, and at the widest part ten miles across; and truly little it must have seemed to the man who had dreamed of europe for his empire, and had half realized his vision. nevertheless, as one of his historians remarks, "if an empire could be supposed to exist within such a brief space, elba possesses so much both of beauty and variety as might constitute the scene of a summer night's dream of sovereignty." at first he professed to be "perfectly resigned to his fate, often spoke of himself as a man politically dead, and claimed credit for what he said on public affairs, as having no remaining interest in them." a comment on himself in connection with elba is amusing. he had been exploring his new domain in the company of sir niel campbell, and had visited, as a matter of course, the iron mines. on being informed that they were valuable, and brought in a revenue of about twenty thousand pounds per annum, "these then," he said, "are mine." but being reminded that he had conferred that revenue on the legion of honor, he exclaimed, "where was my head when i made such a grant? but i have made many foolish decrees of that sort!" he set to work at once to explore every corner of the island, and then to design a number of improvements and alterations on a scale which, had they been carried into execution with the means which he possessed, would have perhaps taken his lifetime to execute. the instinct of the conqueror was by no means dead within him; for "one of his first, and perhaps most characteristic, proposals was to aggrandize and extend his lilliputian dominions by the occupation of an uninhabited island called pianosa, which had been left desolate on account of the frequent descents of the corsairs. he sent thirty of his guards, with ten of the independent company belonging to the island, upon this expedition (what a contrast to those which he had formerly directed!), sketched out a plan of fortification, and remarked with complacency, 'europe will say that i have already made a conquest.'" he was after a short time joined on the island by his mother and his sister pauline, and not a few of those who had once fought under his flag drifted gradually to elba and took service in his guards. a plot was organized in france, and when all was ready napoleon availed himself of the temporary absence of sir neil campbell and of an english cruiser and set sail from elba. at four in the afternoon of sunday, the 26th of february, "a signal gun was fired, the drums beat to arms, the officers tumbled what they could of their effects into flour-sacks, the men arranged their knapsacks, the embarkation began, and at eight in the evening they were under weigh." he had more than one narrow escape on his voyage; for he was hailed by a french frigate. his soldiers, however, had concealed themselves, and his captain was acquainted with the commander of the frigate, so no suspicions were excited. sir niel campbell also, as soon as he found out what had happened, gave chase in a sloop of war, but only arrived in time to obtain a distant view of napoleon's flotilla as its passengers landed. pianosa, the island mentioned above, lies to the north of elba, and gets its name from its almost level surface; for the highest point is said to be only eighty feet above the sea. considering its apparent insignificance, it figures more than could be expected in history. the ill-fated son of marcus agrippa was banished here by augustus, at the instigation of livia, and after a time was more effectually put out of the way, in order to secure the succession of her son tiberius. we read also that it was afterwards the property of marcus piso, who used it as a preserve for peacocks, which were here as wild as pheasants with us. some remnants of roman baths still keep up the memory of its former masters. long afterwards it became a bone of contention between pisa and genoa, and the latter state, on permitting the former to resume possession of these islands of the tuscan archipelago, stipulated that pianosa should be left forever uncultivated and deserted. to secure the execution of this engagement the genoese stopped up all the wells with huge blocks of rock. capraja, a lovely island to the northwest of elba, is rather nearer to corsica than to italy. though less than four miles long, and not half this breadth, it rivals either in hilliness, for its ridges rise in two places more than fourteen hundred feet above the sea. saracen, genoese, pisan, and corsican have caused it in bygone times to lead a rather troubled existence, and even so late as 1796 nelson knocked to pieces the fort which defended its harbor, and occupied the island. "the 'stagno,' or lagoon, the sea-marsh of strabo, is a vast expanse of stagnant salt water, so shallow that it may be forded in parts, yet never dried up by the hottest summer; the curse of the country around for the foul and pestilent vapour and the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects it generates at that season, yet compensating the inhabitants with an abundance of fish. the fishery is generally carried on at night, and in the way often practiced in italy and sicily, by harpooning the fish, which are attracted by a light in the prow of the boat. it is a curious sight on calm nights to see hundreds of these little skiffs or canoes wandering about with their lights, and making an ever-moving illumination on the surface of the lake."[2] elba seems to maintain some relation with the mainland by means of the hilly promontory which supports the houses of piombino, a small town, chiefly interesting as being at no great distance from populonia, an old etruscan city of which some considerable ruins still remain. here, when the clans gathered to bring back the tarquins to rome, stood "sea-girt populonia, whose sentinels descry sardinia's snowy mountain tops fringing the southern sky." but long after lars porsenna of clusium had retreated baffled from the broken bridge populonia continued to be a place of some importance, for it has a castle erected in the middle ages. but now it is only a poor village; it retains, however, fragments of building recalling its roman masters, and its walls of polygonal masonry carry us back to the era of the etruscans. it must not be forgotten that almost the whole of the coast line described in this chapter, from the river magra to civita vecchia, belonged to that mysterious and, not so long since, almost unknown people, the etruscans. indeed, at one time their sway extended for a considerable distance north and south of these limits. even now there is much dispute as to their origin, but they were a powerful and civilized race before rome was so much as founded. they strove with it for supremacy in italy, and were not finally subdued by that nation until the third century before our era. "etruria was of old densely populated, not only in those parts which are still inhabited, but also, as is proved by remains of cities and cemeteries, in tracts now desolated by malaria and relapsed into the desert; and what is now the fen or the jungle, the haunt of the wild boar, the buffalo, the fox, and the noxious reptile, where man often dreads to stay his steps, and hurries away from a plague-stricken land, of old yielded rich harvests of corn, wine and oil, and contained numerous cities mighty and opulent, into whose laps commerce poured the treasures of the east and the more precious produce of hellenic genius. most of these ancient sites are now without a habitant, furrowed yearly by the plough, or forsaken as unprofitable wilderness; and such as are still occupied are, with few exceptions, mere phantoms of their pristine greatness, mere villages in the place of populous cities. on every hand are traces of bygone civilization, inferior in quality, no doubt, to that which at present exists but much wider in extent and exerting far greater influence on the neighboring nations and on the destinies of the world."[3] south of this headland the maremma proper begins. follonica, the only place for some distance which can be called a town, is blackened with smoke to an extent unusual in italy, for here much of the iron ore from elba is smelted. but the views in the neighborhood, notwithstanding the flatness of the marshy or scrub-covered plain, are not without a charm. the inland hills are often attractive; to the north lie the headland of piombino and sea-girt elba, to the south the promontory of castiglione, which ends in a lower line of bluff capped by a tower, and the irregular little island of formica. at castiglione della pescaia is a little harbor, once fortified, which exports wool and charcoal, the products of the neighboring hills. the promontory of castiglione must once have been an island, for it is parted from the inland range by the level plain of the maremma. presently grosseto, the picturesque capital of the maremma, appears, perched on steeply rising ground above the enclosing plain, its sky-line relieved by a couple of low towers and a dome; it has been protected with defenses, which date probably from late in the seventeenth century. then, after the omborne has been crossed, one of the rivers, which issue from the apennines, the promontory of talamone comes down to the sea, protecting the village of the same name. it is a picturesque little place, overlooked by an old castle, and the anchorage is sheltered by the island of s. giglio, quiet enough now, but the guide-book tells us that here, two hundred and twenty-five years before the christian era, the roman troops disembarked and scattered an invading gaulish army. but to the south lies another promontory on a larger scale than tlamone; this is the monte argentario, the steep slopes of which are a mass of forests. the views on this part of the coast are exceptionally attractive. indeed, it would be difficult to find anything more striking than the situation of orbitello. the town lies at the foot of the mountain, for argentario, since it rises full two thousand feet above the sea, and is bold in outline, deserves the name. it is almost separated from the mainland by a great salt-water lagoon, which is bounded on each side by two low and narrow strips of land. the best view is from the south, where we look across a curve of the sea to the town and to monte argentario with its double summit, which, as the border of the lagoon is so low, seems to be completely insulated. orbitello is clearly proved to have been an etruscan town; perhaps, according to mr. dennis, founded by the pelasgi, "for the foundations of the sea-wall which surrounds it on three sides are of vast polygonal blocks, just such as are seen in many ancient sites of central italy (norba, segni, palæstrina, to wit), and such as compose the walls of the neighboring cosa." tombs of etruscan construction have also been found in the immediate neighborhood of the city, on the isthmus of sand which connects it with the mainland. others also have been found within the circuit of the walls. the tombs have been unusually productive; in part, no doubt, because they appear to have escaped earlier plunderers. vases, numerous articles in bronze, and gold ornaments of great beauty have been found. of the town itself, which from the distance has a very picturesque aspect, mr. dennis says: "it is a place of some size, having nearly six thousand inhabitants, and among maremma towns is second only to grosseto. it is a proof how much population tends to salubrity in the maremma that orbitello, though in the midst of a stagnant lagoon ten square miles in extent, is comparatively healthy, and has more than doubled its population in thirty years, while telamona and other small places along the coast are almost deserted in summer, and the few people that remain become bloated like wine-skins or yellow as lizards." but the inland district is full of ruins and remnants of towns which in many cases were strongholds long before romulus traced out the lines of the walls of rome with his plough, if indeed that ever happened. ansedonia, the ancient cosa, is a very few miles away, rusellæ, saturnia, sovana at a considerably greater distance; farther to the south rises another of these forest-clad ridges which, whether insulated by sea or by fen, are so characteristic of this portion of the italian coast. here the old walls of corno, another etruscan town, may be seen to rise above the olive-trees and the holm-oaks. beyond this the lowland becomes more undulating, and the foreground scenery a little less monotonous. corneto now appears, crowning a gently shelving plateau at the end of a spur from the inland hills, which is guarded at last by a line of cliffs. enclosed by a ring of old walls, like cortona, it "lifts to heaven a diadem of towers." in site and in aspect it is a typical example of one of the old cities of etruria. three hundred feet and more above the plain which parts it from the sea, with the gleaming water full in view on one side and the forest-clad ranges on the other, the outlook is a charming one, and the attractions within its walls are by no means slight. there are several old churches, and numerous etruscan and roman antiquities are preserved in the municipal museum. the town itself, however, is not of etruscan origin, its foundation dates only from the middle ages; but on an opposite and yet more insulated hill the ruins of tarquinii, one of the great cities of the etrurian league, can still be traced; hardly less important than veii, one of the most active cities in the endeavor to restore the dynasty of the tarquins, it continued to flourish after it had submitted to rome, but it declined in the dark days which followed the fall of the empire, and never held up its head after it had been sacked by the saracens, till at last it was deserted for corneto, and met the usual fate of becoming a quarry for the new town. only the remnants of buildings and of its defenses are now visible; but the great necropolis which lies to the southeast of the corneto, and on the same spur with it, has yielded numerous antiquities. a romantic tale of its discovery, so late as 1823, is related in the guide-books. a native of corneto in digging accidentally broke into a tomb. through the hole he beheld the figure of a warrior extended at length, accoutred in full armour. for a few minutes he gazed astonished, then the form of the dead man vanished almost like a ghost, for it crumbled into dust under the influence of the fresh air. numerous subterranean chambers have since been opened; the contents, vases, bronzes, gems and ornaments, have been removed to museums or scattered among the cabinets of collectors, but the mural paintings still remain. they are the works of various periods from the sixth to the second or third century before the christian era, and are indicative of the influence exercised by greek art on the earlier inhabitants of italy. as the headland, crowned by the walls of corneto, recedes into the distance a little river is crossed, which, unimportant as it seems, has a place in ecclesiastical legend, for we are informed that at the torre bertaldo, near its mouth, an angel dispelled st. augustine's doubts on the subject of the trinity. then the road approaches the largest port on the coast since leghorn was left. civita vecchia, as the name implies, is an old town, which, after the decline of ostia, served for centuries as the port of rome. it was founded by trajan, and sometimes bore his name in olden time, but there is little or nothing within the walls to indicate so great an antiquity. it was harried, like so many other places near the coast, by the saracens, and for some years was entirely deserted, but about the middle of the ninth century the inhabitants returned to it, and the town, which then acquired its present name, by degrees grew into importance as the temporal power of the papacy increased. if there is little to induce the traveller to halt, there is not much more to tempt the artist. civita vecchia occupies a very low and faintly defined headland. its houses are whitish in color, square in outline, and rather flat-topped. there are no conspicuous towers or domes. it was once enclosed by fortifications, built at various dates about the seventeenth century. these, however, have been removed on the land side, but still remain fairly perfect in the neighborhood of the harbor, the entrance to which is protected by a small island, from which rises a low massive tower and a high circular pharos. there is neither animation nor commerce left in the place; what little there was disappeared when the railway was opened. it is living up to its name, and its old age cannot be called vigorous. south of civita vecchia the coast region, though often monotonous enough, becomes for a time slightly more diversified. there is still some marshy ground, still some level plain, but the low and gently rolling hills which border the main mass of the apennines extend at times down to the sea, and even diversify its coast-line, broken by a low headland. this now and again, as at santa marinella, is crowned by an old castle. all around much evergreen scrub is seen, here growing in tufts among tracts of coarse herbage, there expanding into actual thickets of considerable extent, and the views sometimes become more varied, and even pretty. santa severa, a large castle built of grey stone, with its keep-like group of higher towers on its low crag overlooking the sea, reminds us of some old fortress on the fifeshire coast. near this headland, so antiquarians say, was pyrgos, once the port of the etruscan town of cære, which lies away among the hills at a distance of some half-dozen miles. here and there also a lonely old tower may be noticed along this part of the coast. these recall to mind in their situation, though they are more picturesque in their aspect, the martello towers on the southern coast of england. like them, they are a memorial of troublous times, when the invader was dreaded. they were erected to protect the tuscan coast from the descents of the moors, who for centuries were the dread of the mediterranean. again and again these corsairs swooped down; now a small flotilla would attack some weakly defended town; now a single ship would land its boatload of pirates on some unguarded beach to plunder a neighboring village or a few scattered farms, and would retreat from the raid with a little spoil and a small band of captives, doomed to slavery, leaving behind smoking ruins and bleeding corpses. it is strange to think how long it was before perfect immunity was secured from these curses of the mediterranean. england, whatever her enemies may say, has done a few good deeds in her time, and one of the best was when her fleet, under the command of admiral pellew, shattered the forts of algiers and burnt every vessel of the pirate fleet. the scenery for a time continues to improve. the oak woods become higher, the inland hills are more varied in outline and are forest-clad. here peeps out a crag, there a village or a castle. at palo a large, unattractive villa and a picturesque old castle overlook a fine line of sea-beach, where the less wealthy classes in rome come down for a breath of fresh air in the hot days of summer. it also marks the site of alsium, where, in roman times, one or two personages of note, of whom pompey was the most important, had country residences. for a time there is no more level plain; the land everywhere shelves gently to the sea, covered with wood or with coarse herbage. but before long there is another change, and the great plain of the tiber opens out before our eyes, extending on one hand to the not distant sea, on the other to the hills of rome. it is flat, dreary, and unattractive, at any rate in the winter season, as is the valley of the nen below peterborough, or of the witham beyond the lincolnshire wolds. it is cut up by dykes, which are bordered by low banks. here and there herds of mouse-colored oxen with long horns are feeding, and hay-ricks, round with low conical tops, are features more conspicuous than cottages. the tiber winds on its serpentine course through this fenland plain, a muddy stream, which it was complimentary for the romans to designate _flavus_, unless that word meant a color anything but attractive. one low tower in the distance marks the site of porto, another that of ostia and near the latter a long grove of pines is a welcome variation to the monotony of the landscape. these two towns have had their day of greatness. the former, as its name implies, was once the port of rome, and in the early days of christianity was a place of note. it was founded by trajan, in the neighborhood of a harbor constructed by claudius; for this, like that of ostia, which it was designed to replace, was already becoming choked up. but though emperors may propose, a river disposes, especially when its mud is in question. the port of trajan has long since met with the same fate; it is now only a shallow basin two miles from the sea. of late years considerable excavations have been made at porto on the estate of prince tortonia, to whom the whole site belongs. the port constructed by trajan was hexagonal in form; it was surrounded by warehouses and communicated with the sea by a canal. between it and the outer or claudian port a palace was built for the emperor, and the remains of the wall erected by constantine to protect the harbor on the side of the land can still be seen. the only mediæval antiquities which porto contains are the old castle, which serves as the episcopal palace, and the flower of the church of santa rufina, which is at least as old as the tenth century. ostia, which is a place of much greater antiquity than porto, is not so deserted, though its star declined as that of the other rose. founded, as some say, by ancus martius, it was the port of rome until the first century of the present era. then the silting up of its communication with the sea caused the transference of the commerce to porto, but "the fame of the temple of castor and pollux, the numerous villas of the roman patricians abundantly scattered along the coast, and the crowds of people who frequented its shores for the benefit of sea bathing, sustained the prosperity of the city for some time after the destruction of its harbor." but at last it went down hill, and then invaders came. once it had contained eighty thousand inhabitants; in the days of the medici it was a poor village, and the people eked out their miserable existences by making lime of the marbles of the ruined temples! so here the vandalism of peasants, even more than of patricians, has swept away many a choice relic of classic days. villas and temples alike have been destroyed; the sea is now at a distance; ostia is but a small village, "one of the most picturesque though melancholy sites near rome," but during the greater part of the present century careful excavations have been made, many valuable art treasures have been unearthed, and a considerable portion of the ancient city has been laid bare. shops and dwellings, temples and baths, the theater and the forum, with many a remnant of the ancient town, can now be examined, and numerous antiquities of smaller size are preserved in the museum at the old castle. this, with its strong bastions, its lofty circular tower and huge machicolations, is a very striking object as it rises above the plain "massive and gray against the sky-line." it has been drawn by artists not a few, from raffaelle, who saw it when it had not very long been completed, down to the present time. x venice its early days--the grand canal and its palaces--piazza of st. mark--a venetian funeral--the long line of islands--venetian glass--torcello, the ancient altinum--its two unique churches. so long as venice is unvisited a new sensation is among the possibilities of life. there is no town like it in europe. amsterdam has its canals, but venice is all canals; genoa has its palaces, but in venice they are more numerous and more beautiful. its situation is unique, on a group of islands in the calm lagoon. but the venice of to-day is not the venice of thirty years ago. even then a little of the old romance had gone, for a long railway viaduct had linked it to the mainland. in earlier days it could be reached only by a boat, for a couple of miles of salt water lay between the city and the marshy border of the paduan delta. now venice is still more changed, and for the worse. the people seem more poverty-stricken and pauperized. its buildings generally, especially the ordinary houses, look more dingy and dilapidated. the paint seems more chipped, the plaster more peeled, the brickwork more rotten; everything seems to tell of decadence, commercial and moral, rather than of regeneration. in the case of the more important structures, indeed, the effects of time have often been more than repaired. here a restoration, not seldom needless and ill-judged, has marred some venerable relic of olden days with crude patches of color, due to modern reproductions of the ancient and original work: the building has suffered, as it must be admitted not a few of our own most precious heirlooms have suffered, from the results of zeal untempered by discretion, and the destroyer has worked his will under the guise of the restorer. the mosquito flourishes still in venice as it did of yore. it would be too much to expect that the winged representative of the genus should thrive less in italian freedom than under austrian bondage, but something might have been done to extirpate the two-legged species. he is present in force in most towns south of the alps, but he is nowhere so abundant or so exasperating as in venice. if there is one place in one town in europe where the visitor might fairly desire to possess his soul in peace and to gaze in thoughtful wonder, it is in the great piazza, in front of the façade, strange and beautiful as a dream, of the duomo of st. mark. halt there and try to feast on its marvels, to worship in silence and in peace. vain illusion. there is no crowd of hurrying vehicles or throng of hurrying men to interfere of necessity with your visions (there are often more pigeons than people in the piazza), but up crawls a beggar, in garments vermin-haunted, whining for "charity"; down swoop would-be guides, volunteering useless suggestions in broken and barely intelligible english; from this side and from that throng vendors of rubbish, shell-ornaments, lace, paltry trinkets, and long ribands of photographic "souvenirs," appalling in their ugliness. he who can stand five minutes before san marco and retain a catholic love of mankind must indeed be blessed with a temper of much more than average amiability. the death of rome was indirectly the birth of venice. here in the great days of the empire there was not, so far as we know, even a village. invaders came, the adriatic littoral was wrecked; its salvage is to be found among the islands of the lagoons. aquileia went up in flames, the cities of the paduan delta trembled before the hordes of savage huns, but the islands of its coast held out a hope of safety. what in those days these camps of refuge must have been can be inferred from the islands which now border the mainland, low, marshy, overgrown by thickets, and fringed by reeds; they were unhealthy, but only accessible by intricate and difficult channels, and with little to tempt the spoiler. it was better to risk fever in the lagoons than to be murdered or driven off into slavery on the mainland. it was some time before venice took the lead among these scattered settlements. it became the center of government in the year 810, but it was well-nigh two centuries before the venetian state attained to any real eminence. towards this, the first and perhaps the most important step was crushing the istrian and dalmatian pirates. this enabled the republic to become a great "adriatic and oriental company," and to get into their hands the carrying trade to the east. the men of venice were both brave and shrewd, something like our elizabethan forefathers, mighty on sea and land, but men of understanding also in the arts of peace. she did battle with genoa for commercial supremacy, with the turk for existence. she was too strong for the former, but the latter at last wore her out, and lepanto was one of her latest and least fruitful triumphs. still, it was not till the end of the sixteenth century that a watchful eye could detect the symptoms of senile decay. then venice tottered gradually to its grave. its slow disintegration occupied more than a century and a half; but the french revolution indirectly caused the collapse of venice, for its last doge abdicated, and the city was occupied by napoleon in 1797. after his downfall venetia was handed over to austria, and found in the hapsburg a harsh and unsympathetic master. it made a vain struggle for freedom in 1848, but was at last ceded to italy after the austro-prussian war in 1866. the city is built upon a group of islands; its houses are founded on piles, for there is no really solid ground. how far the present canals correspond with the original channels between small islands, how far they are artificial, it is difficult to say; but whether the original islets were few or many, there can be no doubt that they were formerly divided by the largest, or the grand canal, the _rio alto_ or deep stream. this takes an s-like course, and parts the city roughly into two halves. the side canals, which are very numerous, for the town is said to occupy one hundred and fourteen islands, are seldom wider, often rather narrower than a by-street in the city of london. in venice, as has often been remarked, not a cart or a carriage, not even a coster's donkey-cart, can be used. streets enough there are, but they are narrow and twisting, very like the courts in the heart of london. the carriage, the cab, and the omnibus are replaced by the gondolas. these it is needless to describe, for who does not know them? one consequence of this substitution of canals for streets is that the youthful venetian takes to the water like a young duck to a pond, and does not stand much on ceremony, in the matter of taking off his clothes. turn into a side canal on a summer's day, and one may see the younger members of a family all bathing from their own doorstep, the smallest one, perhaps, to prevent accidents, being tied by a cord to a convenient ring; nay, sometimes as we are wandering through one of the narrow _calle_ (alleys) we hear a soft patter of feet, something damp brushes past, and a little venetian lad, lithe and black-eyed, bare-legged, bare-backed, and all but bare-breeched, shoots past as he makes a short cut to his clothes across a block of buildings, round which he cannot yet manage to swim. in such a city as venice it is hard to praise one view above another. there is the noble sweep of the grand canal, with its palaces; there are many groups of buildings on a less imposing scale, but yet more picturesque, on the smaller canals, often almost every turn brings some fresh surprise; but there are two views which always rise up in my mind before all others whenever my thoughts turn to venice, more especially as it used to be. one is the view of the façade of san marco from the piazza. i shall make no apology for quoting words which describe more perfectly than my powers permit the impressions awakened by this dream-like architectural conception. "beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away: a multitude of pillars and white domes clustered into a long, low pyramid of colored light, a treasure-heap, as it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic and beset with sculptures of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory; sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm-leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes, and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptered and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their features indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of eden when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. and round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine, spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, cleopatra-like, 'their bluest veins to kiss,' the shadow as it steals back from them revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand: their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs all beginning and ending in the cross: and above them in the broad archivolts a continuous chain of language and of life, angels and the signs of heaven and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above them another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, a confusion of delight, among which the breasts of the greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the st. mark's lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst."[4] this is san marco as it was. eight centuries had harmed it little; they had but touched the building with a gentle hand and had mellowed its tints into tender harmony; now its new masters, cruel in their kindness, have restored the mosaics and scraped the marbles; now raw blotches and patches of crude color glare out in violent contrast with those parts which, owing to the intricacy of the carved work, or some other reason, it has been found impossible to touch. to look at st. mark's now is like listening to some symphony by a master of harmony which is played on instruments all out of tune. photographs, pictures, illustrations of all kinds, have made st. mark's so familiar to all the world that it is needless to attempt to give any description of its details. it may suffice to say that the cathedral stands on the site of a smaller and older building, in which the relics of st. mark, the tutelary saint of venice, had been already enshrined. the present structure was begun about the year 976, and occupied very nearly a century in building. but it is adorned with the spoils of many a classic structure: with columns and slabs of marble and of porphyry and of serpentine, which were hewn from quarries in greece and syria, in egypt and libya, by the hands of roman slaves, and decked the palaces and the baths, the temples and the theaters of roman cities. the inside of st. mark's is not less strange and impressive, but hardly so attractive as the exterior. it is plain in outline and almost heavy in design, a greek cross in plan, with a vaulted dome above the center and each arm. much as the exterior of st. mark's owes to marble, porphyry, and mosaic, it would be beautiful if constructed only of grey limestone. this could hardly be said of the interior: take away the choice stones from columns and dado and pavement, strip away the crust of mosaic, those richly robed figures on ground of gold, from wall and from vault (for the whole interior is veneered with marbles or mosaics), and only a rather dark, massive building would remain, which would seem rather lower and rather smaller than one had been led to expect. the other view in venice which seems to combine best its peculiar character with its picturesque beauty may be obtained at a very short distance from st. mark's. leave the façade of which we have just spoken, the three great masts, with their richly ornamented sockets of bronze, from which, in the proud days of venice, floated the banners of candia, cyprus, and the morea; turn from the piazza into the piazzetta; leave on the one hand the huge campanile, more huge than beautiful (if one may venture to whisper a criticism), on the other the sumptuous portico of the ducal palace; pass on beneath the imposing façade of the palace itself, with its grand colonnade; on between the famous columns, brought more than seven centuries since from some syrian ruins, which bear the lion of st. mark and the statue of st. theodore, the other patron of the republic; and then, standing on the molo at the head of the riva degli schiavoni, look around; or better still, step down into one of the gondolas which are in waiting at the steps, and push off a few dozen yards from the land: then look back on the façade of the palace and the bridge of sighs, along the busy quays of the riva, towards the green trees of the giardini publici, look up the piazzetta, between the twin columns, to the glimpses of st. mark's and the towering height of the campanile, along the façade of the royal palace, with the fringe of shrubbery below contrasting pleasantly with all these masses of masonry, up the broad entrance to the grand canal, between its rows of palaces, across it to the great dome of santa maria della salute and the dogana della mare, with its statue of fortune (appropriate to the past rather than to the present) gazing out from its seaward angle. beyond this, yet farther away, lies the isola san giorgio, a group of plain buildings only, a church, with a dome simple in outline and a brick campanile almost without adornment, yet the one thing in venice, after the great group of st. mark; this is a silent witness to its triumphs in presses itself on the mind. from this point of view venice rises before our eyes in its grandeur and in its simplicity, in its patrician and its plebeian aspects, as "a sea cybele, fresh from ocean, throned on her hundred isles ... a ruler of the waters and their powers." [illustration] but to leave venice without a visit to the grand canal would be to leave the city with half the tale untold. its great historic memories are gathered around the piazza of st. mark; this is a silent witness to its triumphs in peace and in war, to the deeds noble and brave, of its rulers. but the grand canal is the center of its life, commercial and domestic; it leads from its quays to its exchange, from the riva degli schiavoni and the dogana della mare to the rialto. it is bordered by the palaces of the great historic families who were the rulers and princes of venice, who made the state by their bravery and prudence, who destroyed it by their jealousies and self-seeking. the grand canal is a genealogy of venice, illustrated and engraved on stone. as one glides along in a gondola, century after century in the history of domestic architecture, from the twelfth to the eighteenth, slowly unrolls itself before us. there are palaces which still remain much as they were of old, but here and there some modern structure, tasteless and ugly, has elbowed for itself a place among them; not a few, also, have been converted into places of business, and are emblazoned with prominent placards proclaiming the trade of their new masters, worthy representatives of an age that is not ashamed to daub the cliffs of the st. gothard with the advertisements of hotels and to paint its boulders for the benefit of vendors of chocolate! but in the present era one must be thankful for anything that is spared by the greed of wealth and the vulgarity of a "democracy." much of old venice still remains, though little steamers splutter up and down the grand canal, and ugly iron bridges span its waters, both, it must be admitted, convenient, though hideous; still the gondolas survive; still one hears at every corner the boatman's strange cry of warning, sometimes the only sound except the knock of the oar that breaks the silence of the liquid street. every turn reveals something quaint and old-world. now it is a market-boat, with its wicker panniers hanging outside, loaded with fish or piled with vegetables from one of the more distant islets; now some little bridge, now some choice architectural fragment, a doorway, a turret, an oriel, or a row of richly ornate windows, now a tiny piazzetta leading up to the façade and campanile of a more than half-hidden church; now the marble enclosure of a well. still the water-carriers go about with buckets of hammered copper hung at each end of a curved pole; still, though more rarely, some quaint costume may be seen in the _calle_; still the dark shops in the narrow passages are full of goods strange to the eye, and bright in their season with the flowers and fruits of an italian summer; still the purple pigeons gather in scores at the wonted hour to be fed on the piazza of st. mark, and, fearless of danger, convert the distributor of a pennyworth of maize into a walking dovecot. still venice is delightful to the eyes (unhappily not always so to the nose in many a nook and corner) notwithstanding the pressure of poverty and the wantonness of restorers. perchance it may revive and yet see better days (its commerce is said to have increased since 1866); but if so, unless a change comes over the spirit of the age, the result will be the more complete destruction of all that made its charm and its wonder; so this chapter may appropriately be closed by a brief sketch of one scene which seems in harmony with the memories of its departed greatness, a venetian funeral. the dead no longer rest among the living beneath the pavement of the churches: the gondola takes the venetian "about the streets" to the daily business of life; it bears him away from his home to the island cemetery. from some narrow alley, muffled by the enclosing masonry, comes the sound of a funeral march; a procession emerges on to the piazzetta by the water-side; the coffin is carried by long-veiled acolytes and mourners with lighted torches, accompanied by a brass band with clanging cymbals. a large gondola, ornamented with black and silver, is in waiting at the nearest landing place; the band and most of the attendants halt by the water-side; the coffin is placed in the boat, the torches are extinguished; a wilder wail of melancholy music, a more resonant clang of the cymbals, sounds the last farewell to home and its pleasures and its work; the oars are dipped in the water, and another child of venice is taken from the city of the living to the city of the dead. a long line of islands completely shelters venice from the sea, so that the waters around its walls are very seldom ruffled into waves. the tide also rises and falls but little, not more than two or three feet, if so much. thus no banks of pestiferous mud are laid bare at low water by the ebb and flow, and yet some slight circulation is maintained in the canals, which, were it not for this, would be as intolerable as cesspools. small boats can find their way over most parts of the lagoon, where in many places a safe route has to be marked out with stakes, but for large vessels the channels are few. a long island, malamocco by name, intervenes between venice and the adriatic, on each side of which are the chief if not the only entrances for large ships. at its northern end is the sandy beach of the lido, a great resort of the venetians, for there is good sea-bathing. but except this, malamocco has little to offer; there is more interest in other parts of the lagoon. at the southern end, some fifteen miles away, the old town of chioggia is a favorite excursion. on the sea side the long fringe of narrow islands, of which malamocco is one, protected by massive walls, forms a barrier against the waves of the adriatic. on the land side is the dreary fever-haunted region of the _laguna morta_, like a vast fen, beyond which rise the serrate peaks of the alps and the broken summits of the euganean hills. the town itself, the roman fossa claudia, is a smaller edition of venice, joined like it to the mainland by a bridge. if it has fewer relics of architectural value it has suffered less from modern changes, and has retained much more of its old-world character. murano, an island or group of islands, is a tiny edition of venice, and a much shorter excursion, for it lies only about a mile and a half away to the north of the city. here is the principal seat of the workers in glass; here are made those exquisite reproductions of old venetian glass and of ancient mosaic which have made the name of salviati noted in all parts of europe. here, too, is a cathedral which, though it has suffered from time, neglect and restoration, is still a grand relic. at the eastern end there is a beautiful apse enriched by an arcade and decorated with inlaid marbles, but the rest of the exterior is plain. as usual in this part of italy (for the external splendor of st. mark's is exceptional) all richness of decoration is reserved for the interior. here columns of choice stones support the arches; there is a fine mosaic in the eastern apse, but the glory of murano is its floor, a superb piece of _opus alexandrinum_, inlaid work of marbles and porphyries, bearing date early in the eleventh century, and richer in design than even that at st. mark's, for peacocks and other birds, with tracery of strange design, are introduced into its patterns. but there is another island beyond murano, some half-dozen miles away from venice, which must not be left unvisited. it is reached by a delightful excursion over the lagoon, among lonely islands thinly inhabited, the garden grounds of venice, where they are not left to run wild with rank herbage or are covered by trees. this is torcello, the ancient altinum. here was once a town of note, the center of the district when venice was struggling into existence. its houses now are few and ruinous; the ground is half overgrown with populars and acacias and pomegranates, red in summer-time with scarlet flowers. but it possesses two churches which, though small in size are almost unique in their interest, the duomo, dedicated to st. mary, and the church of sta. fosca. they stand side by side, and are linked together by a small cloister. the former is a plain basilica which retains its ancient plan and arrangement almost intact. at one end is an octagonal baptistry, which, instead of being separated from the cathedral by an _atrium_ or court, is only divided from it by a passage. the exterior of the cathedral is plain; the interior is not much more ornate. ancient columns, with quaintly carved capitals supporting stilted semicircular arches, divide the aisles from the nave. each of these has an apsidal termination. the high altar stands in the center of the middle one, and behind it, against the wall, the marble throne of the bishop is set up on high, and is approached by a long flight of marble steps. on each side, filling up the remainder of the curve, six rows of steps rise up like the seats of an amphitheater, the places of the attendant priests. the chancel, true to its name, is formed by enclosing a part of the nave with a low stone wall and railing. opinions differ as to the date of this cathedral. according to fergusson it was erected early in the eleventh century, but it stands on the site of one quite four centuries older, and reproduces the arrangement of its predecessor if it does not actually incorporate portions of it. certainly the columns and capitals in the nave belong, as a rule, to an earlier building. indeed, they have probably done duty more than once, and at least some of them were sculptured before the name of attila had been heard of in the delta of the north italian rivers. the adjoining church of sta. fosca is hardly less interesting. an octagonal case, with apses at the eastern end, supports a circular drum, which is covered by a low conical roof, and a cloister or corridor surrounds the greater part of the church. this adds much to the beauty of the design, the idea, as fergusson remarks, being evidently borrowed from the circular colonnades of the roman temples. he also justly praises the beauty of the interior. in this church also, which in its present condition is not so old as the cathedral, the materials of a much older building or buildings have been employed. but over these details or the mosaics in the cathedral we must not linger, and must only pause to mention the curious stone chair in the adjacent court which bears the name of the throne of attila; perhaps, like the chair of the dukes of corinthia, it was the ancient seat of the chief magistrate of the island. xi alexandria the bleak and barren shores of the nile delta--peculiar shape of the city--strange and varied picture of alexandrian street life--the place mehemet ali--glorious panorama from the cairo citadel--pompey's pillar--the battle of the nile--discovery of the famous inscribed stone at rosetta--port said and the suez canal. it is with a keen sense of disappointment that the traveller first sights the monotonous and dreary-looking egyptian sea-board. the low ridges of desolate sandhills, occasionally broken by equally unattractive lagunes, form a melancholy contrast to the beautiful scenery of the north african littoral farther west, which delighted his eyes a short time before, while skirting the algerian coast. what a change from the thickly-wooded hills gently sloping upwards from the water's edge to the lower ridges of the atlas range, whose snow-clad peaks stand out clear in the brilliant atmosphere, the landscape diversified with cornfields and olive groves, and thickly studded with white farmhouses, looking in the distance but white specks, and glittering like diamonds under the glowing rays of the sun. now, instead of all this warmth of color and variety of outline, one is confronted by the bleak and barren shores of the nile delta. if the expectant traveller is so disenchanted with his first view of egypt from the sea, still greater is his disappointment as the ship approaches the harbor. this bustling and painfully modern-looking town--the city of the great alexander, and the gate of that land of oriental romance and fascinating association--might, but for an occasional palm-tree or minaret standing out among the mass of european buildings, be mistaken for some flourishing european port, say a marseilles or havre plumped down on the egyptian plain. but though we must not look for picturesque scenery and romantic surroundings in this thriving port, there is yet much to interest the antiquarian and the "intelligent tourist" in this classic district. the delta sea-board was for centuries the battle-ground of the greek and roman empires, and the country between alexandria and port said is strewed with historic sites. alexandria itself, though a much europeanized and a hybrid sort of city, is not without interest. it has been rather neglected by egyptian travel writers, and consequently by the tourist, who rarely strikes out a line for himself. it is looked upon too much as the port of cairo, just as leghorn is of pisa and florence, and visitors usually content themselves with devoting to it but one day, and then rushing off by train to cairo. it would be absurd, of course, to compare alexandria, in point of artistic, antiquarian, and historical interest, to this latter city; though, as a matter of fact, cairo is a modern city compared to the alexandria of alexander; just as alexandria is but of mushroom growth contrasted with heliopolis, thebes, memphis, or the other dead cities of the nile valley of which traces still remain. it has often been remarked that the ancient city has bequeathed nothing but its ruins and its name to alexandria of to-day. even these ruins are deplorably scanty, and most of the sites are mainly conjectural. few vestiges remain of the architectural splendor of the ptolemaic dynasty. where are now the 4,000 palaces, the 4,000 baths, and the 400 theaters, about which the conquering general amru boasted to his master, the caliph omar? what now remains of the magnificent temple of serapis, towering over the city on its platform of one hundred steps? though there are scarcely any traces of the glories of ancient alexandria, once the second city of the empire, yet the recollection of its splendors has not died out, and to the thoughtful traveller this city of memories has its attractions. here st. mark preached the gospel and suffered martyrdom, and here athanasius opposed in warlike controversy the arian heresies. here for many centuries were collected in this center of greek learning and culture the greatest intellects of the civilized world. here cleopatra, "vainqueur des vainqueurs du monde," held antony willing captive, while octavius was preparing his legions to crush him. here amru conquered, and here abercrombie fell. even those whose tastes do not incline them to historical or theological researches are familiar, thanks to kingsley's immortal romance, with the story of the noble-minded hypatia and the crafty and ambitious cyril, and can give rein to their imagination by verifying the sites of the museum where she lectured, and the cæsarum where she fell a victim to the atrocious zeal of peter the reader and his rabble of fanatical monks. the peculiar shape of the city, built partly on the pharos island and peninsula, and partly on the mainland, is due, according to the chroniclers, to a patriotic whim of the founder, who planned the city in the form of a chlamys, the short cloak or tunic worn by the macedonian soldiers. the modern city, though it has pushed its boundaries a good way to the east and west, still preserves this curious outline, though to a non-classical mind it rather suggests a star-fish. various legends are extant to account for the choice of this particular spot for a mediterranean port. according to the popular version, a venerable seer appeared to the great conqueror in a dream, and quoted those lines of the odyssey which describe the one sheltered harbor on the northern coast of egypt:--"a certain island called pharos, that with the high-waved sea is washed, just against egypt." acting on this supernatural hint, alexander decided to build his city on that part of the coast to which the pharos isle acted as a natural breakwater, and where a small greek fishing settlement was already established, called rhacotis. the legend is interesting, but it seems scarcely necessary to fall back on a mythical story to account for the selection of this site. the two great aims of alexander were the foundation of a center for trade, and the extension of commerce, and also the fusion of the greek and roman nations. for the carrying out of these objects, the establishment of a convenient sea-port with a commanding position at the mouth of the nile was required. the choice of a site a little west of the nile mouths was, no doubt, due to his knowledge of the fact that the sea current sets eastward, and that the alluvial soil brought down by the nile would soon choke a harbor excavated east of the river, as had already happened at pelusium. it is this alluvial wash which has rendered the harbors of rosetta and damietta almost useless for vessels of any draught, and at port said the accumulation of sand necessitates continuous dredging in order to keep clear the entrance of the suez canal. a well-known writer on egypt has truly observed that there are three egypts to interest the traveller. the egypt of the pharoahs and the bible, the egypt of the caliphates and the "arabian nights," and the egypt of european commerce and enterprise. it is to this third stage of civilization that the fine harbor of alexandria bears witness. not only is it of interest to the engineer and the man of science, but it is also of great historic importance. it serves as a link between ancient and modern civilization. the port is alexander the great's best monument--"si quæris monumentum respice." but for this, alexandria might now be a little fishing port of no more importance than the little greek fishing village, rhacotis, whose ruins lie buried beneath its spacious quays. it is not inaccurate to say that the existing harbor is the joint work of alexander and english engineers of the present century. it was originally formed by the construction of a vast mole (heptastadion) joining the island of pharos to the mainland; and this stupendous feat of engineering, planned and carried out by alexander, has been supplemented by the magnificent breakwater constructed by england in 1872, at a cost of over two and a half millions sterling. after marseilles, malta, and spezzia, it is perhaps the finest port in the mediterranean, both on account of its natural advantages as a haven, and by reason of the vast engineering works mentioned above. the western harbor (formerly called eunostos or "good home sailing") of which we are speaking--for the eastern, or so-called new harbor, is choked with sand and given up to native craft--has only one drawback in the dangerous reef at its entrance, and which should have been blasted before the breakwater and the other engineering works were undertaken. the passage through the bar is very intricate and difficult, and is rarely attempted in very rough weather. the eastern harbor will be of more interest to the artist, crowded as it is with the picturesque native craft and dahabyehs with their immense lateen sails. the traveller, so disgusted with the modern aspect of the city from the western harbor, finds some consolation here, and begins to feel that he is really in the east. formerly this harbor was alone available for foreign ships, the bigoted moslems objecting to the "frankish dogs" occupying their best haven. this restriction has, since the time of mehemet ali, been removed, greatly to the advantage of alexandrian trade. during the period of turkish misrule--when egypt under the mamelukes, though nominally a vilayet of the ottoman empire, was practically under the dominion of the beys--the trade of alexandria had declined considerably, and rosetta had taken away most of its commerce. when mehemet ali, the founder of the present dynasty, rose to power, his clear intellect at once comprehended the importance of this ancient emporium, and the wisdom of alexander's choice of a site for the port which was destined to become the commercial center of three continents. mehemet is the creator of modern alexandria. he deepened the harbor, which had been allowed to be choked by the accumulation of sand, lined it with spacious quays, built the massive forts which protect the coast, and restored the city to its old commercial importance, by putting it into communication with the nile through the medium of the mahmoudiyeh canal. this vast undertaking was only effected with great loss of life. it was excavated by the forced labor of 250,000 peasants, of whom some 20,000 died from the heat and the severe toil. on landing from the steamer the usual scrimmage with arab porters, levantine hotel touts, and egyptian donkey boys, will have to be endured by the traveller. he may perhaps be struck, if he has any time or temper left for reflection at all, with the close connection between the english world of fashion and the donkey, so far at least as nomenclature is concerned, each animal being named after some english celebrity. the inseparable incidents of disembarkation at an eastern port are, however, familiar to all who have visited the east; and the same scenes are repeated at every north african port, from tangier to port said, and need not be further described. the great thoroughfare of alexandria, a fine street running in a straight line from the western gate of the city to the place mehemet ali, is within a few minutes of the quay. a sudden turn and this strange mingling of eastern and western life bursts upon the spectator's astonished gaze. this living diorama, formed by the brilliant and ever-shifting crowd, is in its way unique. a greater variety of nationalities is collected here than even in constantinople or cosmopolitan algiers. let us stand aside and watch this motley collection of all nations, kindreds, and races pouring along this busy highway. the kaleidoscopic variety of brilliant color and fantastic costume seems at first a little bewildering. solemn and impassive-looking turks gently ambling past on gaily caparisoned asses, grinning negroes from the nubian hills, melancholy-looking fellahs in their scanty blue kaftans, cunning-featured levantines, green-turbaned shereefs, and picturesque bedouins from the desert stalking along in their flowing bernouses, make up the mass of this restless throng. interspersed, and giving variety of color to this living kaleidoscope, gorgeously-arrayed jews, fierce-looking albanians, their many-colored sashes bristling with weapons, and petticoated greeks. then, as a pleasing relief to this mass of color, a group of egyptian ladies glide past, "a bevy of fair damsels richly dight," no doubt, but their faces, as well as their rich attire, concealed under the inevitable yashmak surmounting the balloon-like trousers. such are the elements in this mammoth masquerade which make up the strange and varied picture of alexandrian street life. and now we may proceed to visit the orthodox sights, but we have seen the greatest sight alexandria has to show us. [illustration] the place mehemet ali, usually called for the sake of brevity the grand square, is close at hand. this is the center of the european quarter, and round it are collected the banks, consular offices, and principal shops. this square, the focus of the life of modern alexandria, is appropriately named after the founder of the present dynasty, and the creator of the egypt of to-day. to this great ruler, who at one time bid fair to become the founder, not only of an independent kingdom, but of a great oriental empire, alexandria owes much of its prosperity and commercial importance. the career of mehemet ali is interesting and romantic. there is a certain similarity between his history and that of napoleon i., and the coincidence seems heightened when we remember that they were born in the same year. each, rising from an obscure position, started as an adventurer on foreign soil, and each rose to political eminence by force of arms. unlike napoleon, however, in one important point, mehemet ali founded a dynasty which still remains in power, in spite of the weakness and incapacity of his successors. to western minds, perhaps, his great claim to hold a high rank in the world's history lies in his efforts to introduce european institutions and methods of civilization, and to establish a system of government opposed to mohammedan instincts. he created an army and navy which were partly based on european models, stimulated agriculture and trade, and organized an administrative and fiscal system which did much towards putting the country on a sound financial footing. the great blot of his reign was no doubt the horrible massacre of the mameluke beys, and this has been the great point of attack by his enemies and detractors. it is difficult to excuse this oriental example of a _coup d'état_, but it must be remembered that the existence of this rebellious element was incompatible with the maintenance of his rule, and that the peace of the country was as much endangered by the mameluke beys as was that of the porte by the janissaries a few years later, when a somewhat similar atrocity was perpetrated. in the middle of the square stands a handsome equestrian statue of mehemet ali which is, in one respect, probably unique. the mohammedan religion demands the strictest interpretation of the injunction in the decalogue against making "to thyself any craven image," and consequently a statue to a follower of the creed of mahomet is rarely seen in a mohammedan country. the erection of this particular monument was much resented by the more orthodox of the mussulman population of alexandria, and the religious feelings of the mob manifested themselves in riots and other hostile demonstrations. not only representations in stone or metal, but any kind of likeness of the human form is thought impious by mohammedans. they believe that the author will be compelled on the resurrection day to indue with life the sacrilegious counterfeit presentment. tourists in egypt who are addicted to sketching, or who dabble in photography, will do well to remember these conscientious scruples of the moslem race, and not let their zeal for bringing back pictorial mementoes of their travels induce them to take "snapshots" of mosque interiors, for instance. in egypt, no doubt, the natives have too wholesome a dread of the franks to manifest their outraged feelings by physical force, but still it is ungenerous, not to say unchristian, to wound people's religious prejudices. in some other countries of north africa, notably in the interior of morocco or tripoli, promiscuous photography might be attended with disagreeable results, if not a certain amount of danger. a tourist would find a kodak camera, even with all the latest improvements, a somewhat inefficient weapon against a mob of fanatical arabs. that imposing pile standing out so prominently on the western horn of pharos is the palace of ras-et-teen, built by mehemet ali, and restored in execrable taste by his grandson, the ex-khedive ismail. seen from the ship's side, the palace has a rather striking appearance. the exterior, however, is the best part of it, as the ornate and gaudy interior contains little of interest. from the upper balconies there is a good view of the harbor, and the gardens are well worth visiting. they are prettily laid out, and among many other trees, olives may be seen, unknown in any other part of the delta. the decorations and appointments of the interior are characterized by a tawdry kind of magnificence. the incongruous mixture of modern french embellishments and oriental splendor gives the saloons a meretricious air, and the effect is bizarre and unpleasing. it is a relief to get away from such obtrusive evidences of the ex-khedive's decorative tastes, by stepping out on the balcony. what a forest of masts meets the eye as one looks down on the vast harbor; the inner one, a "sea within a sea," crowded with vessels bearing the flags of all nations, and full of animation and movement. the view is interesting, and makes one realize the commercial importance of this great emporium of trade, the meeting-place of the commerce of three continents, yet it does not offer many features to distinguish it from a view of any other thriving port. for the best view of the city and the surrounding country we must climb the slopes of mount caffarelli to the fort which crowns the summit, or make our way to the fortress kom-el-deek on the elevated ground near the rosetta gate. alexandria, spread out like a map, lies at our feet. at this height the commonplace aspect of a bustling and thriving seaport, which seems on a close acquaintance to be europeanized and modernized out of the least resemblance to an oriental city, is changed to a prospect of some beauty. at alexandria, even more than at most cities of the east, distance lends enchantment to the view. from these heights the squalid back streets and the bustling main thoroughfares look like dark threads woven into the web of the city, relieved by the white mosques, with their swelling domes curving inward like fan palms towards the crescents flashing in the rays of the sun, and their tall graceful minarets piercing the smokeless and cloudless atmosphere. the subdued roar of the busy streets and quays is occasionally varied by the melodious cry of the muezzin. then looking northward one sees the clear blue of the mediterranean, till it is lost in the hazy horizon. to the west and south the placid waters of the mareotis lake, in reality a shallow and insalubrious lagoon, but to all appearances a smiling lake, which, with its water fringed by the low-lying sand dunes, reminds the spectator of the peculiar beauties of the norfolk broads. looking south beyond the lake lies the luxuriant plain of the delta. the view may not be what is called picturesque, but the scenery has its special charm. the country is no doubt flat and monotonous, but there is no monotony of color in this richly cultivated plain. innumerable pens have been worn out in comparison and simile when describing the peculiar features of this north african holland. to some this huge market garden with its network of canals, simply suggests a chess-board. others are not content with these prosaic comparisons, and their more fanciful metaphor likens the country to a green robe interwoven with silver threads, or to a seven-ribbed fan, the ribs being of course the seven mouths of the nile. truth to tell, though, the full force of this fanciful image would be more felt by a spectator who is enjoying that glorious panorama from the cairo citadel, as the curious triangular form of the delta is much better seen from that point than from alexandria at the base of the triangle. one may differ as to the most appropriate metaphors, but all must agree that there are certain elements of beauty about the delta landscape. seen, as most tourists do see it, in winter or spring, the green fields of waving corn and barley, the meadows of water-melons and cucumbers, the fields of pea and purple lupin one mass of colors, interspersed with the palm-groves and white minarets, which mark the site of the almost invisible mud villages, and intersected thickly with countless canals and trenches that in the distance look like silver threads, and suggest brobdignagian filigree work, or the delicate tracery of king frost on our window-panes, the view is impressive and not without beauty. in the summer and early autumn, especially during august and september when the nile is at its height, the view is more striking though hardly so beautiful. then it is that this protean country offers its most impressive aspect. the delta becomes an inland archipelago studded with green islands, each island crowned with a white-mosqued village, or conspicuous with a cluster of palms. the nile and its swollen tributaries are covered with huge-sailed dahabyehs, which give life and variety to the watery expanse. alexandria can boast of few "lions" as the word is usually understood, but of these by far the most interesting is the column known by the name of pompey's pillar. everyone has heard of the famous monolith, which is as closely associated in people's minds with alexandria as the colosseum is with rome, or the alhambra with granada. it has, of course, no more to do with the pompey of history (to whom it is attributed by the unlettered tourist) than has cleopatra's needle with that famous queen, the "serpent of old nile"; or joseph's well at cairo with the hebrew patriarch. it owes its name to the fact that a certain prefect, named after cæsar's great rival, erected on the summit of an existing column a statue in honor of the horse of the roman emperor diocletian. there is a familiar legend which has been invented to account for the special reason of its erection, which guide-book compilers are very fond of. according to this story, this historic animal, through an opportune stumble, stayed the persecution of the alexandrian christians, as the tyrannical emperor had sworn to continue the massacre till the blood of the victims reached his horse's knees. antiquarians and egyptologists are, however, given to scoffing at the legend as a plausible myth. in the opinion of many learned authorities, the shaft of this column was once a portion of the serapeum, that famous building which was both a temple of the heathen god serapis and a vast treasure-house of ancient civilization. it has been suggested--in order to account for its omission in the descriptions of alexandria, given by pliny and strabo, who had mentioned the two obelisks of cleopatra--that the column had fallen, and that the prefect pompey had merely re-erected it in honor of diocletian, and replaced the statue of serapis with one of the emperor--or of his horse, according to some chroniclers. this statute, if it ever existed, has now disappeared. as it stands, however, it is a singularly striking and beautiful monument, owing to its great height, simplicity of form, and elegant proportions. it reminds the spectator a little of nelson's column in trafalgar square, and perhaps the absence of a statue is not altogether to be regretted considering the height of the column, as it might suggest to the irrepressible tourists who scoff at nelson's statue as the "mast-headed admiral," some similar witticism at the expense of diocletian. with the exception of this monolith, which, "a solitary column, mourns above its prostrate brethren," only a few fragmentary and scattered ruins of fallen columns mark the site of the world-renowned serapeum. nothing else remains of the famous library, the magnificent portico with its hundred steps, the vast halls, and the four hundred marble columns of that great building designed to perpetuate the glories of the ptolemies. this library, which was the forerunner of the great libraries of modern times, must not be confounded with the equally famous one that was attached to the museum, whose exact site is still a bone of contention among antiquarians. the latter was destroyed by accident, when julius cæsar set fire to the alexandrian fleet. the serapeum collection survived for six hundred years, till its wanton destruction through the fanaticism of the caliph omar. the arab conqueror is said to have justified this barbarism with a fallacious epigram, which was as unanswerable, however logically faulty, as the famous one familiar to students of english history under the name of archbishop morton's fork. "if these writings," declared the uncompromising conqueror, "agree with the book of god, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." nothing could prevail against this flagrant example of a _petitio principii_, and for six months the three hundred thousand parchments supplied fuel for the four thousand baths of alexandria. hard by pompey's pillar is a dreary waste, dotted with curiously carved structures. this is the mohammedan cemetery. as in most oriental towns, the cemetery is at the west end of the town, as the mohammedans consider that the quarter of the horizon in which the sun sets is the most suitable spot for their burying-places. in this melancholy city of the dead are buried also many of the ruins of the serapeum, and scattered about among the tombs are fragments of columns and broken pedestals. on some of the tombs a green turban is roughly painted, strangely out of harmony with the severe stone carving. this signifies that the tomb holds the remains of a descendant of the prophet, or of a devout moslem, who had himself, and not vicariously as is so often done, made the pilgrimage to the sacred city of mecca. some of the head-stones are elaborately carved, but most are quite plain, with the exception of a verse of the koran cut in the stone. the observant tourist will notice on many of the tombs a curious little round hole cut in the stone at the head, which seems to be intended to form a passage to the interior of the vault, though the aperture is generally filled up with earth. it is said that this passage is made to enable the angel israfel at the resurrection to draw out the occupant by the hair of his head; and the custom which obtains among the lower class moslems of shaving the head with the exception of a round tuft of hair in the middle--a fashion which suggests an incipient pigtail or an inverted tonsure--is as much due to this superstition as to sanitary considerations. of far greater interest than this comparatively modern cemetery are the cave cemeteries of el-meks. these catacombs are some four miles from the city. the route along the low ridge of sand-hills is singularly unpicturesque, but the windmills which fringe the shore give a homely aspect to the country, and serve at any rate to break the monotony of this dreary and prosaic shore. we soon reach said pacha's unfinished palace of el-meks, which owes its origin to the mania for building which helped to make the reign of that weak-minded ruler so costly to his over-taxed subjects. one glimpse at the bastard style of architecture is sufficient to remove any feeling of disappointment on being told that the building is not open to the public. the catacombs, which spread for a long distance along the seashore, and of which the so-called baths of cleopatra are a part, are very extensive, and tourists are usually satisfied with exploring a part. there are no mummies, but the niches can be clearly seen. the plan of the catacombs is curiously like the wards of a key. there are few "sights" in alexandria of much interest besides those already mentioned. in fact, alexandria is interesting more as a city of sites than sights. it is true that the names of some of the mosques, such as that of the one thousand and one columns, built on the site of st. mark's martyrdom, and the mosque of st. athanasius, are calculated to arouse the curiosity of the tourist: but the interest is in the name alone. the mosque of many columns is turned into a quarantine station, and the mosque of st. athanasius has no connection with the great father except that it stands on the site of a church in which he probably preached. then there is the coptic convent of st. mark, which, according to the inmates, contains the body of the great evangelist--an assertion which would scarcely deceive the most ignorant and the most credulous tourist that ever entrusted himself to the fostering care of messrs. cook, as it is well known that st. mark's body was removed to venice in the ninth century. the mosque, with the ornate exterior and lofty minaret, in which the remains of said pacha are buried, is the only one besides those already mentioned which is worth visiting. the shores of the delta from alexandria to rosetta are singularly rich in historical associations, and are thickly strewn with historic landmarks. the plain in which have been fought battles which have decided the fate of the whole western world, may well be called the "belgium of the east." in this circumscribed area the empires of the east and west struggled for the mastery, and many centuries later the english here wrested from napoleon their threatened indian empire. in the few miles' railway journey between alexandria and the suburban town of ramleh the passenger traverses classic ground. at mustapha pacha the line skirts the roman camp, where octavius defeated the army of antony, and gained for rome a new empire. unfortunately there are now few ruins left of this encampment, as most of the stones were used by ismail pacha in building one of his innumerable palaces, now converted into a hospital and barracks for the english troops. almost on this very spot where octavius conquered, was fought the battle of alexandria, which gave the death-blow to napoleon's great scheme of founding an eastern empire, and converting the mediterranean into "un lac français." this engagement was, as regards the number of troops engaged, an insignificant one; but as the great historian of modern europe has observed, "the importance of a triumph is not always to be measured by the number of men engaged. the contest of 12,000 britons with an equal number of french on the sands of alexandria, in its remote effect, overthrew a greater empire than that of charlemagne, and rescued mankind from a more galling tyranny than that of the roman emperors."[5] a few minutes more and the traveller's historical musings are interrupted by the shriek of the engine as the train enters the ramleh station. this pleasant and salubrious town, with its rows of trim villas standing in their own well-kept grounds and gardens, the residences of alexandrian merchants, suggests a fashionable or "rising" english watering place rather than an oriental town. as a residence it has no doubt many advantages, including a good and sufficient water supply, and frequent communication by train with alexandria. but these are not the attractions which appeal to the traveller or tourist. the only objects of interest are the ruins of the temple of arsenoe, the wife of ptolemy philadelphus. concerning this temple there is an interesting and romantic legend, which no doubt suggested to pope his fanciful poem, "the rape of the lock":- "not berenice's hair first rose so bright, the heavens bespangling with dishevelled light." this pretty story, which has been immortalized by catullus, is as follows:--when ptolemy euergetes left for his expedition to syria, his wife berenice vowed to dedicate her hair to venus zephyrites should her husband return safe and sound. her prayer was answered, and in fulfilment of her vow she hung within the temple of arsenoe the golden locks that had adorned her head. unfortunately they were stolen by some sacrilegious thief. the priests were naturally troubled, the king was enraged, and the queen inconsolable. however, the craft of conon, the court astronomer, discovered a way by which the mysterious disappearance could be satisfactorily explained, the priests absolved of all blame, and the vanity of the queen gratified. the wily astronomer-courtier declared that jupiter had taken the locks and transformed them into a constellation, placing it in that quarter of the heavens (the "milky way") by which the gods, according to tradition, passed to and from olympus. this pious fraud was effected by annexing the group of stars which formed the tail of the constellation leo, and declaring that this cluster of stars was the new constellation into which berenice's locks had been transformed. this arbitrary modification of the celestial system is known by the name of coma berenices, and is still retained in astronomical charts. "i 'mongst the stars myself resplendent now, i, who once curled on berenice's brow, the tress which she, uplifting her fair arm, to many a god devoted, so from harm they might protect her new-found royal mate, when from her bridal chamber all elate, with its sweet triumph flushed, he went in haste to lay the regions of assyria waste."[6] a few miles northwest of ramleh, at the extremity of the western horn of aboukir bay, lies the village of aboukir. the railway to rosetta skirts that bay of glorious memory, and as the traveller passes by those silent and deserted shores which fringe the watery arena whereon france and england contended for the empire of the east, he lives again in those stirring times, and the dramatic episodes of that famous battle of the nile crowd upon the memory. that line of deep blue water, bounded on the west by the rocky islet, now called nelson's island, and on the east by fort st. julien on the rosetta headland, marks the position of the french fleet on the 1st of august, 1798. the fleet was moored in the form of a crescent close along the shore, and was covered by the batteries of fort aboukir. so confident was bruèys, the french admiral, in the strength of his position, and in his superiority in guns and men (nearly as three to two) over nelson's fleet, that he sent that famous despatch to paris, declaring that the enemy was purposely avoiding him. great must have been his dismay when the english fleet, which had been scouring the mediterranean with bursting sails for six long weeks in search of him, was signaled, bearing down unflinchingly upon its formidable foe--that foe with which nelson had vowed he would do battle, if above water, even if he had to sail to the antipodes. "by to-morrow i shall have gained a peerage or westminster abbey," were the historic words uttered by the english admiral when the french fleet was sighted, drawn up in order of battle in aboukir bay. the soundings of this dangerous roadstead were unknown to him, but declaring that "where there was room for the enemy to swing, there must be room for us to anchor," he ordered his leading squadron to take up its position to the landward of the enemy. the remainder of the english fleet was ordered to anchor on the outside of the enemy's line, but at close quarters, thus doubling on part of the enemy's line, and placing it in a defile of fire. in short, the effect of this brilliant and masterly disposition of the english fleet was to surround two-thirds of the enemy's ships, and cut them off from the support of their consorts, which were moored too far off to injure the enemy or aid their friends. the french admiral, in spite of his apparently impregnable position, was consequently out-manoeuvred from the outset, and the victory of nelson virtually assured. evening set in soon after nelson had anchored. all through the night the battle raged fiercely and unintermittently, "illuminated by the incessant discharge of over two thousand cannon," and the flames which burst from the disabled ships of the french squadron. the sun had set upon as proud a fleet as ever set sail from the shores of france, and morning rose upon a strangely altered scene. shattered and blackened hulks now only marked the position they had occupied but a few hours before. on one ship alone, the _tonnant_, the tricolor was flying. when the _theseus_ drew near to take her as prize, she hoisted a flag of truce, but kept her colors flying. "your battle flag or none!" was the stern reply, as her enemy rounded to and prepared to board. slowly and reluctantly, like an expiring hope, that pale flag fluttered down her lofty spars, and the next that floated there was the standard of old england. "and now the battle was over--india was saved upon the shores of egypt--the career of napoleon was checked, and his navy was annihilated. seven years later that navy was revived, to perish utterly at trafalgar--a fitting hecatomb for the obsequies of nelson, whose life seemed to terminate as his mission was then and thus accomplished." the glories of trafalgar, immortalized by the death of nelson, have no doubt obscured to some extent those of the nile. the latter engagement has not, indeed, been enshrined in the memory of englishmen by popular ballads--those instantaneous photographs, as they might be called, of the highest thoughts and strongest emotions inspired by patriotism--but hardly any great sea-fight of modern times has been more prolific in brilliant achievements of heroism and deeds of splendid devotion than the battle of the nile. the traditions of this terrible combat have not yet died out among the egyptians and arabs, whose forefathers had lined the shores of the bay on that memorable night, and watched with mingled terror and astonishment the destruction of that great armament. it was with some idea of the moral effect the landing of english troops on the shores of this historic bay would have on arabi's soldiery, that lord wolseley contemplated disembarking there the english expeditionary force in august, 1882. on the eastern horn of aboukir bay, on the rosetta branch of the nile, and about five miles from its mouth, lies the picturesque town of rosetta. its arabic name is rashid, an etymological coincidence which has induced some writers to jump to the conclusion that it is the birthplace of haroun al rashid. to some persons no doubt the town would be shorn of much of its interest if dissociated from our old friend of "the thousand and one nights;" but the indisputable fact remains that haroun al rashid died some seventy years before the foundation of the town in a. d. 870. rosetta was a port of some commercial importance until the opening of the mahmoudiyeh canal in 1819 diverted most of its trade to alexandria. the town is not devoid of architectural interest, and many fragments of ruins may be met with in the half-deserted streets, and marble pillars, which bear signs of considerable antiquity, may be noticed built into the doorways of the comparatively modern houses. one of the most interesting architectural features of rosetta is the north gate, flanked with massive towers of a form unusual in egypt, each tower being crowned with a conical-shaped roof. visitors will probably have noticed the curious gabled roofs and huge projecting windows of most of the houses. it was from these projecting doorways and latticed windows that such fearful execution was done to the british troops at the time of the ill-fated english expedition to egypt in 1807. general wauchope had been sent by general fraser, who was in command of the troops, with an absurdly inadequate force of 1,200 men to take the strongly-garrisoned town. mehemet ali's albanian troops had purposely left the gates open in order to draw the english force into the narrow and winding streets. their commander, without any previous examination, rushed blindly into the town with all his men. the albanian soldiery waited till the english were confined in this infernal labyrinth of narrow, crooked streets, and then from every window and housetop rained down on them a perfect hail of musket-shot and rifle-ball. before the officers could extricate their men from this terrible death-trap a third of the troops had fallen. such was the result of this rash and futile expedition, which dimmed the lustre of their arms in egypt, and contributed a good deal to the loss of their military prestige. that this crushing defeat should have taken place so near the scene of the most glorious achievement of their arms but a few years before, was naturally thought a peculiar aggravation of the failure of this ill-advised expedition. to archæological students and egyptologists rosetta is a place of the greatest interest, as it was in its neighborhood that the famous inscribed stone was found which furnished the clue--sought in vain for so many years by egyptian scholars--to the hieroglyphic writings of egypt. perhaps none of the archæological discoveries made in egypt since the land was scientifically exploited by the savants attached to napoleon's expedition, not even that of the mummified remains of the pharaohs, is more precious in the eyes of egyptologists and antiquarians than this comparatively modern and ugly-looking block of black basalt, which now reposes in the egyptian galleries of the british museum. the story of its discovery is interesting. a certain monsieur bouchard, a french captain of engineers, while making some excavations at fort st. julien, a small fortress in the vicinity of rosetta, discovered this celebrated stone in 1799. the interpretation of the inscription for many years defied all the efforts of the most learned french savants and english scholars, until, in 1822, two well-known egyptologists, champollion and dr. young, after independent study and examination, succeeded in deciphering that part of the inscription which was in greek characters. from this they learnt that the inscription was triplicate and trilingual: one in greek, the other in the oldest form of hieroglyphics, the purest kind of "picture-writing," and the third in demotic characters--the last being the form of hieroglyphics used by the people, in which the symbols are more obscure than in the pure hieroglyphics used by the priests. the inscription, when finally deciphered, proved to be one of comparatively recent date, being a decree of ptolemy v., issued in the year 196 b. c. the rosetta stone was acquired by england as part of the spoils of war in the egyptian expedition of 1801. at rosetta the railway leaves the coast and goes south to cairo. if the traveller wishes to see something of the agriculture of the delta, he would get some idea of the astonishing fertility of the country by merely taking the train to damanhour, the center of the cotton-growing district. the journey does not take more than a couple of hours. the passenger travelling by steamer from alexandria to port said, though he skirts the coast, can see no signs of the agricultural wealth of egypt, and for him the whole of egypt might be an arid desert instead of one of the most fertile districts in the whole world. the area of cultivated lands, which, however, extends yearly seawards, is separated from the coast by a belt composed of strips of sandy desert, marshy plain, low sandhills, and salt lagunes, which varies in breadth from fifteen to thirty miles. a line drawn from alexandria to damietta, through the southern shore of lake boorlos, marks approximately the limit of cultivated land in this part of the delta. the most unobservant traveller in egypt cannot help perceiving that its sole industry is agriculture, and that the bulk of its inhabitants are tillers of the soil. egypt seems, indeed, intended by nature to be the granary and market-garden of north africa, and the prosperity of the country depends on its being allowed to retain its place as a purely agricultural country. the ill-advised, but fortunately futile, attempts which have been made by recent rulers to develop manufactures at the expense of agriculture, are the outcome of a short-sighted policy or perverted ambition. experience has proved that every acre diverted from its ancient and rational use as a bearer of crops is a loss to the national wealth. that "egypt is the gift of the nile" has been insisted upon with "damnable iteration" by every writer on egypt, from herodotus downwards. according to the popular etymology,[7] the very name of the nile ([greek: neilos], from [greek: nea ilys], new mud) testifies to its peculiar fertilizing properties. the nile is all in all to the egyptian, and can we wonder that egyptian mythologists recognized in it the creative principle waging eternal warfare with typhon, the destructive principle, represented by the encroaching desert? as mr. stanley lane-poole has well observed, "without the nile there would be no egypt; the great african sahara would spread uninterruptedly to the red sea. egypt is, in short, a long oasis worn in the rocky desert by the ever-flowing stream, and made green and fertile by its waters." at cairo the nile begins to rise about the third week in june, and the beginning of the overflow coincides with the heliacal rising of the dog star. the heavens have been called the clocks of the ancients, and, according to some writers, it was the connection between the rise of the nile and that of the dog star that first opened the way to the study of astronomy among the ancient egyptians, so that not only was the nile the creator of their country, but also of their science. the fellahs, however, still cherish a lingering belief in the supernatural origin of the overflow. they say that a miraculous drop of water falls into the nile on the 17th of june, which causes the river to swell. till september the river continues to rise, not regularly, but by leaps and bounds. in this month it attains its full height, and then gradually subsides till it reaches its normal height in the winter months. as is well known, the quality of the harvest depends on the height of the annual overflow--a rise of not less than eighteen feet at cairo being just sufficient, while a rise of over twenty-six feet, or thereabouts, would cause irreparable damage. it is a common notion that a very high nile is beneficial; whereas an excessive inundation would do far more harm to the country than an abnormal deficiency of water. statistics show conclusively that most of the famines in egypt have occurred after an exceptionally high nile. shakespeare, who, we know, is often at fault in matters of natural science, is perhaps partly accountable for this popular error:--"the higher nilus swells, the more it promises," he makes antony say, when describing the wonders of egypt to cæsar. [illustration] the coast between rosetta and port said is, like the rest of the egyptian littoral, flat and monotonous. the only break in the dreary vista is afforded by the picturesque-looking town of damietta, which, with its lofty houses, looking in the distance like marble palaces, has a striking appearance seen from the sea. the town, though containing some spacious bazaars and several large and well-proportioned mosques, has little to attract the visitor, and there are no antiquities or buildings of any historic interest. the traveller, full of the traditions of the crusades, who expects to find some traces of saladin and the saracens, will be doomed to disappointment. damietta is comparatively modern, the old byzantine city having been destroyed by the arabs early in the thirteenth century, and rebuilt--at a safer distance from invasion by sea--a few miles inland, under the name of mensheeyah. one of the gateways of the modern town, the mensheeyah gate, serves as a reminder of its former name. though the trade of damietta has, in common with most of the delta sea-ports, declined since the construction of the mahmoudiyeh canal, it is still a town of some commercial importance, and consular representatives of several european powers are stationed here. to sportsmen damietta offers special advantages, as it makes capital headquarters for the wild-fowl shooting on menzaleh lake, which teems with aquatic birds of all kinds. myriads of wild duck may be seen feeding here, and "big game"--if the expression can be applied to birds--in the shape of herons, pelicans, storks, flamingoes, etc., is plentiful. in the marshes which abut on the lake, specimens of the papyrus are to be found, this neighborhood being one of the few habitats of this rare plant. soon after rounding the projecting ridge of low sand-hills which fringe the estuary of the damietta branch of the nile, the noble proportions of the loftiest lighthouse of the mediterranean come into view. it is fitted with one of the most powerful electric lights in the world, its penetrating rays being visible on a clear night at a distance of over twenty-five miles. shortly afterwards the forest of masts, apparently springing out of the desert, informs the passenger of the near vicinity of port said. there is, of course, nothing to see at port said from a tourist's standpoint. the town is little more than a large coaling station, and is of very recent growth. it owes its existence solely to the suez canal, and to the fact that the water at that part of the coast is deeper than at pelusium, where the isthmus is narrowest. the town is built partly on artificial foundations on the strip of low sand-banks which forms a natural sea-wall protecting lake menzaleh from the mediterranean. in the autumn at high nile it is surrounded on all sides by water. an imaginative writer once called port said the venice of africa--not a very happy description, as the essentially modern appearance of this coaling station strikes the most unobservant visitor. the comparison might for its inappositeness rank with the proverbial one between macedon and monmouth. both venice and port said are land-locked, and that is the only feature they have in common. the sandy plains in the vicinity of the town are, however, full of interest to the historian and archæologist. here may be found ruins and remains of antiquity which recall a period of civilization reaching back more centuries than port said (built in 1859) does years. the ruins of pelusium (the sin of the old testament), the key of northeastern egypt in the pharaonic period, are only eighteen miles distant, and along the shore may still be traced a few vestiges of the great highway--the oldest road in the world of which remains exist--constructed by rameses ii., in 1350 b. c., when he undertook his expedition for the conquest of syria. to come to more recent history. it was on the pelusiac shores that cambyses defeated the egyptians, and here some five centuries later pompey the great was treacherously murdered when he fled to egypt, after the battle of pharsalia. to the southwest of port said, close to the wretched little fishing village of sais, situated on the southern shore of lake menzaleh, are the magnificent ruins of tanis (the zoan of the old testament). these seldom visited remains are only second to those of thebes in historical and archæological interest. it is a little curious that while tourists flock in crowds to distant thebes and karnak, few take the trouble to visit the easily accessible ruins of tanis. the ruins were uncovered at great cost of labor by the late mariette bey, and in the great temple were unearthed some of the most notable monuments of the pharaohs, including over a dozen gigantic fallen obelisks--a larger number than any theban temple contains. this vast building, restored and enlarged by rameses ii., goes back to over five thousand years. as thebes declined tanis rose in importance, and under the kings of the twenty-first dynasty it became the chief seat of government. mr. john macgregor (rob roy), who was one of the first of modern travellers to call attention to these grand ruins, declares that of all the celebrated remains he had seen none impressed him "so deeply with the sense of fallen and deserted magnificence" as the ruined temple of tanis. the suez canal is admittedly one of the greatest undertakings of modern times, and has perhaps effected a greater transformation in the world's commerce, during the thirty years that have elapsed since its completion, than has been effected in the same period by the agency of steam. it was emphatically the work of one man, and of one, too, who was devoid of the slightest technical training in the engineering profession. monsieur de lesseps cannot, of course, claim any originality in the conception of this great undertaking, for the idea of opening up communication between the mediterranean and the red sea by means of a maritime canal is almost as old as egypt itself, and many attempts were made by the rulers of egypt from sesostris downwards to span the isthmus with "a bridge of water." most of these projects proved abortive, though there was some kind of water communication between the two seas in the time of the ptolemies, and it was by this canal that cleopatra attempted to escape after the battle of actium. when napoleon the great occupied egypt, he went so far as to appoint a commission of engineers to examine into a projected scheme for a maritime canal, but owing to the ignorance of the commissioners, who reported that there was a difference of thirty feet in the levels of the two seas--though there is really scarcely more than six inches--which would necessitate vast locks, and involve enormous outlay of money, the plan was given up. the suez canal is, in short, the work of one great man, and its existence is due to the undaunted courage, the indomitable energy, to the intensity of conviction, and to the magnetic personality of m. de lesseps, which influenced everyone with whom he came in contact, from viceroy down to the humblest fellah. this great project was carried out, too, not by a professional engineer, but by a mere consular clerk, and was executed in spite of the most determined opposition of politicians and capitalists, and in the teeth of the mockery and ridicule of practical engineers, who affected to sneer at the scheme as the chimerical dream of a vainglorious frenchman. the canal, looked at from a purely picturesque standpoint, does not present such striking features as other great monuments of engineering skill--the forth bridge, the mont cenis tunnel, or the great railway which scales the highest peaks of the rocky mountains. this "huge ditch," as it has been contemptuously called, "has not indeed been carried over high mountains, nor cut through rock-bound tunnels, nor have its waters been confined by titanic masses of masonry." in fact, technically speaking, the name canal as applied to this channel is a misnomer. it has nothing in common with other canals--no locks, gates, reservoirs, nor pumping engines. it is really an artificial strait, or a prolongation of an arm of the sea. we can freely concede this, yet to those of imaginative temperament there are elements of romance about this great enterprise. it is the creation of a nineteenth-century wizard who, with his enchanter's wand--the spade--has transformed the shape of the globe, and summoned the sea to flow uninterruptedly from the mediterranean to the indian ocean. then, too, the most matter-of-fact traveller who traverses it can hardly fail to be impressed with the genius loci. every mile of the canal passes through a region enriched by the memories of events which had their birth in the remotest ages of antiquity. across this plain four thousand years ago abraham wandered from far-away ur of the chaldees. beyond the placid waters of lake menzaleh lie the ruins of zoan, where moses performed his miracles. on the right lies the plain of pelusium, across which rameses ii. led his great expedition for the conquest of syria; and across this sandy highway the hosts of persian, greek, and roman conquerors successively swept to take possession of the riches of egypt. in passing through the canal at night--the electric light seeming as a pillar of fire to the steamer, as it swiftly, but silently, ploughs its course through the desert--the strange impressiveness of the scene is intensified. "the canal links together in sweeping contrast the great past and the greater present, pointing to a future which we are as little able to divine, as were the pharaohs or ptolemies of old to forecast the wonders of the twentieth century." xii malta "england's eye in the mediterranean"--vast systems of fortifications--sentinels and martial music--the strada reale of valletta--church of st. john--st. elmo--the military hospital, the "very glory of malta"--citta vecchia--saint paul and his voyages. there is a difference of opinion among voyagers as to whether it is best to approach malta by night or by day; whether there is a greater charm in tracing the outline of "england's eye in the mediterranean" by the long, undulating lines of light along its embattled front, and then, as the sun rises, to permit the details to unfold themselves, or to see the entire mass of buildings and sea walls and fortifications take shape according to the rapidity with which the ship nears the finest of all the british havens in the middle sea. much might be said for both views, and if by "malta" is meant its metropolis, then the visitor would miss a good deal who did not see the most picturesque portion of the island in both of these aspects. and by far the majority of those who touch at valletta, on their way to or from some other place, regard this city as "the colony" in miniature. many, indeed, are barely aware that it has a name apart from that of the island on which it is built; still fewer that the "villa" of la valletta is only one of four fortified towns all run into one, and that over the surface of this thickly populated clump are scattered scores of villages, while their entire coasts are circled by a ring of forts built wherever the cliffs are not steep enough to serve as barriers against an invader. on the other hand, while there is no spot in the maltese group half so romantic, or any "casal" a tithe as magnificent as valletta and its suburbs, it is a little unfortunate for the scenic reputation of the chief island-fortress that so few visitors see any other part of it than the country in the immediate vicinity of its principal town. for, if none of the islands are blessed with striking scenery, that of malta proper is perhaps the least attractive. though less than sixty miles from sicily, these placid isles oft though they have been shaken by earthquakes, do not seem to have ever been troubled by the volcanic outbursts of etna. composed of a soft, creamy rock, dating from the latest geological period, the elephants and hippopotami disinterred from their caves show that, at a time when the mediterranean stretched north and south over broad areas which are now dry land, these islands were still under water, and that at a date comparatively recent, before the straits of gibraltar had been opened, and when the contracted mediterranean was only a couple of lakes malta was little more than a peninsula of africa. indeed, so modern is the group as we know it, that within the human era comino seems to have been united with the islands on each side of it. for, as the deep wheel-ruts on the opposite shores of the two nearer islands, even at some distance in the water, demonstrate, the intervening straits have either been recently formed, or were at one period so shallow as to be fordable. but if it be open to doubt whether night or day is the best time to make our first acquaintance with malta, there can be none as to the season of the year when it may be most advantageously visited; for if the tourist comes to malta in spring, he will find the country bright with flowers, and green with fields of wheat and barley, and cumin and "sulla" clover, or cotton, and even with plots of sugar-cane, tobacco, and the fresh foliage of vineyards enclosed by hedges of prickly pears ready to burst into gorgeous blossom. patches of the famous maltese potatoes flourish cheek by jowl with noble crops of beans and melons. figs and pomegranates, peaches, pears, apricots, and medlars are in blossom; and if the curious pedestrian peers over the orchard walls, he may sight oranges and lemons gay with the flowers of which the fragrance is scenting the evening air. but in autumn, when the birds of passage arrive for the winter, the land has been burnt into barrenness by the summer sun of the scorching sirocco. the soil, thin, but amazingly fertile, and admirably suited by its spongy texture to retain the moisture, looks white and parched as it basks in the hot sunshine; and even the gardens, enclosed by high stone walls to shelter them from the torrid winds from africa, or the wild "gregale" from the north, or the levanter which sweeps damp and depressing towards the straits of gibraltar, fail to relieve the dusty, chalk-like aspect of the landscape. hills there are--they are called the "bengemma mountains" by the proud maltese--but they are mere hillocks to the scoffer from more alpine regions, for at ta-l'aghlia, the highest elevation in malta, 750 feet is the total tale told by the barometer, while it is seldom that the sea cliffs reach half that height. the valleys in the undulating surface are in proportion, and even they and the little glens worn by the watercourses are bald, owing to the absence of wood; for what timber grew in ancient times has long ago been hewn down, and the modern maltee has so inveterate a prejudice against green leaves which are not saleable that he is said to have quietly uprooted the trees which a paternal government planted for the supposed benefit of unappreciative children. hence, with the exception of a bosky grove around some ancient palace of the knights, or a few carob trees, so low that the goats in lack of humble fodder can, as in morocco, climb into them for a meal, the rural districts of malta lack the light and shade which forests afford, just as its arid scenery is unrelieved either by lake, or river, or by any brook worthy of the name. however, as the blue sea, running into inlet and bay, or ending the vista of some narrow street, or driving the spray before the "tempestuous" wind, called "euroklydon," is seldom out of sight, the sparkle of inland water is less missed than it would be were the country larger. but malta proper is only one of the maltese group. as the geography books have it, there are three main islands, malta, gozo, and between them the little one of comino, which with cominetto, a still smaller islet close by, seems to have been the crest of a land of old, submerged beneath the sea. the voyager is barely out of sight of sicily before the faint outlines of these isles are detected, like sharply defined clouds against a serenely blue sky. yet, undeniably, the first view of malta is disappointing; for with etna fresh in the memory of the visitor from one direction, and the great rock of gibraltar vivid in the recollection of those arriving from the other end of the mediterranean, there is little in any of the three islands to strike the imagination. for most of the picturesqueness of malta is due to the works of man, and all of its romance to the great names and mighty events with which its historic shores are associated. but there are also around the coasts of this major member of the maltese clump the tiny filfla, with its venerable church; the pietro negro, or black rock; gzeier sanctified by the wreck of st. paul; and scoglio marfo, on which a few fishermen encamp, or which grow grass enough for some rabbits or a frugal goat or two; and, great in fame though small in size, the hagra tal general, or fungus rock, on which still flourishes that curious parasitic plant, the _fungus melitensis_ of the old botanists, the _cynomorium coccineum_ of latter-day systematists. the visitor who has the curiosity to land on the rock in april or may will find it in full flower, and perhaps, considering its ancient reputation, may be rather disappointed with the appearance of a weed which at one time enjoyed such a reputation as a stauncher of blood and a sovereign remedy for a host of other diseases that the knights of malta stored it carefully as a gift for friendly monarchs and to the hospitals of the island. it is less valued in our times, though until very recently the keeper of the rock on which it flourishes most abundantly was a permanent official in the colonial service. the place indeed is seldom profaned nowadays by human feet; for the box drawn in a pulley by two cables, which was the means of crossing the hundred and fifty feet of sea between the rocks and the shore of dueira, was broken down some years ago, and has not since been renewed. but, apart from these scientific associations of this outlier of gozo, the second largest island of the maltese group is worthy of being more frequently examined than it is, albeit the lighthouse of ta giurdan is familiar enough to every yachtsman in the "magnum mare." for it is the first bit of malta seen from the west, and the last memory of it which the home-coming exile sights as he returns with a lighter heart from the east. yet except for its classical memories (it was the fable isle of calypso, the gaulos of the greeks, the gaulum of the romans, and the ghaudex of the arabs, a name still in use among the natives), the tourist in search of the picturesque will not find a great deal to gratify him in gozo, with its bay-indented shore, rugged in places, but except in the southern and western coast rarely attaining a height of three hundred feet above the sea. still, its pleasing diversity of hill and dale, its occasional groves of trees, and the flourishing gardens from which valletta market is supplied with a great portion of its vegetables, lend an appearance of rural beauty to gozo seldom seen or altogether lacking in the rest of the group. gozo appears to have suffered less from foreign invasions than malta or even comino. its goat cheese still preserves something of the reputation that comestible obtained in days when the world had a limited acquaintance with dairy produce, and the "maltese jacks," potent donkeys (the very antipodes of their tiny kindred on the barbary coast) are mostly exported from this spot. but, like the peculiar dogs and cats of the group, they are now getting scarce. the appearance of the gozitans also is somewhat different from that of their countrymen elsewhere, and they speak the maltese tongue with a closer approach to the arabic than do the inhabitants of the other islands, whose speech has become intermingled with that of every mediterranean race, from the tyrians to the italians, though the basis of it is unquestionably phoenician, and is gradually getting dashed with the less sonorous language of their latest rulers. indeed, the lamps in daily use are identical in shape with the earthenware ones disinterred from the most ancient of carthaginian tombs, and until lately a peculiar jargon, allied to hebrew, and known as "braik," was spoken at casal garbo, an inland village not far from the bay off which lies the general's rock. but the gozo folk nowadays trade neither in tin nor in purple, their gaily-painted boats crossing the straits of freghi with no more romantic cargoes than cabbages and cucumbers for his majesty's ships; and the swarthy damsels who sit at the half-doors of the white houses are intent on nothing so much as the making of the famous maltese lace. except, however, in the strength, industry, and thrift of the gozitans, there is little in this island to remind the visitor of their phoenician forefathers, and in a few years, owing to the steady intercourse which daily steam communication has brought about between them and their less sophisticated countrymen, the "giant's tower" (the ruins of a temple of astarte) at casal xghara will be about the only remnant of these pre-historic settlers. but casal nadur, with its robust men and handsome women, the tierka zerka or azure window, a natural arch on the seashore, and rabato, the little capital in the center of the island, which, in honor of the jubilee year, changed its name for that of victoria, are all worthy of a walk farther afield than migiarro, or the "carting place," off which the valletta steamer anchors. from the ruined walls of the citadel the visitor can survey gozo with its conical hills, flattened at the top owing to the wearing away of the upper limestone by the action of the weather and sinking of the underlying greensand, the whole recalling a volcano-dotted region. then, if he cares to tarry so long, the sightseer may from this pleasant center tramp or drive to the bay of ramla, in a rock overhanging which is another "grotto of calypso," or to the bay of marsa-il-forno, or to the bay of xlendi, through a well-watered ravine filled with fruit-trees, a walk which offers an opportunity of seeing the best cliff scenery in the island; or, finally, to the cala dueira, hard by which is the general's rock, which (as we already know) forms one of the chief lions of gozo. comino with its caves will not detain the most eager of sightseers very long, and its scanty industries, incapable of supporting more than forty people, are not calculated to arouse much enthusiasm. the shortest route to valletta from migiarro is to marfa; but most people will prefer to land at once at valletta. here the change from the quiet islands to the busy metropolis of the group is marked. everything betokens the capital of a dependency which, if not itself wealthy, is held by a wealthy nation, and a fortress upon which money has been lavished by a succession of military masters without any regard to the commercial aspects of the outlay. for if malta has been and must always continue to be a trading center, it has for ages never ceased to be primarily a place of arms, a stronghold to the defensive strength of which every other interest must give way. all the public buildings are on a scale of substantiality which, to the voyager hitherto familiar only with gibraltar, is rather striking. even the residences of the officials are finer than one would expect in a "colony" (though there are no colonists, and no room for them) with a population less than 170,000, and a revenue rarely exceeding £250,000 per annum. dens, vile beyond belief, there are no doubt in valletta. but these are for the most part in narrow bye-lanes, which have few attractions for the ordinary visitor, or in the manderaggio, a quasi-subterranean district, mostly below sea-level, where the houses are often without windows and conveniences even more important; so that there is an unconscious grimness in the prophetic humor which has dubbed this quarter of valletta (two-and-a-half acres in area, peopled by 2,544 persons) "the place of cattle." yet though the ninety-five square miles of the maltese islands are about the most densely populated portions of the earth, the soil is so fertile, and the sources of employment, especially since the construction of the suez canal, so plentiful, that extreme penury is almost unknown, while the rural population seem in the happy mean of being neither rich nor poor. [illustration] but the tourist who for the first time surveys valletta from the deck of a steamer as she anchors in the quarantine harbor, or still better from the grand harbor on the other side of the peninsula on which the capital is built, sees little of this. scarcely is the vessel at rest before she is surrounded by a swarm of the peculiar high-prowed "dghaisas," or maltese boats, the owners of which, standing while rowing, are clamorous to pull the passenger ashore; for malta, like its sister fortress at the mouth of the mediterranean, does not encourage wharves and piers, alongside of which large craft may anchor and troublesome crews swarm when they are not desired. crowds of itinerant dealers, wily people with all the supple eagerness of the oriental, and all the lack of conscience which is the convenient heritage of the trader of the middle sea, establish themselves on deck, ready to part with the laces, and filigrees, and corals, and shells, and apocryphal coins of the knights of st. john, for any ransom not less than twice their value. but in malta, as elsewhere in the mediterranean ports, there are always two prices, the price for which the resident obtains anything, and the price which the stranger is asked to pay. to these tariffs a new one has of late years been added, and this is that paradisaical figure, that fond legend of a golden age invoked only when the buyer is very eager, or very verdant, or very rich, "the price that lady brassey paid." however, even when the sojourner fancies that he has made a fair bargain (and the appraisements fall suddenly as the last bell begins to ring), the pedler is well in pocket, so well, indeed, that it has been calculated every steamer leaves behind it something like two hundred pounds in cash. but if the rubbish sold in valletta can be bought quite as good and rather more cheaply in london, valletta itself must be seen _in situ_. the entrance to either of the harbors enables one to obtain but a slight idea of the place. it seems all forts and flat-roofed buildings piled one above the other in unattractive terraces. there are guns everywhere, and, right and left, those strongholds which are the final purposes of cannon. as the steamer creeps shrieking into "port marsa-musciet" (the "port" is superfluous, since the arabic "marsa" means the same thing) or quarantine harbor, it passes dragut point, with fort tigne on the right and fort st. elmo on the left, in addition to fort manoel and the lazaretto on an island straight ahead. had our destination been the grand harbor on the other side of valletta, fort ricasoli and fort st. angelo would have been equally in evidence, built on two of the various projections which intersect the left side of that haven. but the forts are, as it were, only the ganglia of the vast systems of fortifications which circle every creek and bay and headland of valletta and its offshoots. ages of toil, millions of money, and the best talent of three centuries of engineers have been lavished on the bewildering mass of curtains and horn-works, and ravelins and demilunes, and ditches and palisades, and drawbridges and bastions, and earthworks, which meet the eye in profusion enough to have delighted the soul of uncle toby. sentinels and martial music are the most familiar of sights and sounds, and after soldiers and barracks, sailors and war-ships, the most frequent reminders that malta, like gibraltar, is a great military and naval station. but it is also in possession of some civil rights unknown to the latter. among these is a legislature with limited power and boundless chatter, and, what is of more importance to the visitor, the citizens can go in and out of valletta at all hours of the day and night, no raised drawbridge or stolid portcullis barring their movements in times of peace. the stranger lands without being questioned as to his nationality, and in malta the briton is bereft of the _civis-romanus-sum_ sort of feeling he imbibes in gibraltar; for here the alien can circulate as freely as the lords of the soil. but the man who wishes to explore valletta must be capable of climbing; for from the landing place to the chief hotel in the main street the ascent is continuous, and for the first part of the way is by a flight of stairs. indeed, these steps are so often called into requisition that one can sympathize with the farewell anathema of bryon as he limped up one of these frequent obstacles to locomotion, "adieu! ye cursed streets of stairs! (how surely he who mounts you swears)." the reason of this peculiar construction is that valletta is built on the ridge of mount scebarras, so that the ascent from the harbor to the principal streets running along the crest of the hill is necessarily steep. the result is, however, a more picturesque town than would have been the case had the architect who laid out the town when jean de la valette, grand master of the knights, resolved in 1566 to transfer the capital here from the center of the island, been able to find funds to form a plateau by leveling down the summit of the mound. hence valletta is composed of streets running longitudinally and others crossing the former at right angles. most of these are eked out by steps; one, the strada santa lucia, is made up of flights of them, and none are level from end to end. the backbone of the town and the finest of its highways is the strada reale, or royal street, which in former days was known as the strada san georgio, and during the brief french occupation as "the street of the rights of man." seven main streets run parallel with it, while eleven at right angles extend in straight lines across the promontory from harbor to harbor. the strada reale, with the strada mercanti alongside of it are, however, the most typical bits of the capital, and the visitor who conscientiously tramps through either, with a peep here and there up or down the less important transverse "strade," obtains a fair idea of the city of la valette, whose statue stands with that of l'isle adam over the porta reale at the farther end of the street bearing that name. here the first barrier to an invasion from the landward side is met with in the shape of a deep ditch hewn through the solid rock, right across the peninsula from the one harbor to the other, cutting off if necessary the suburb of floriana from the town proper, though floriana, with its rampart gardens, parade ground, and barracks, is again protected on the inland aspect by other of the great fortifications which circle the seashore everywhere. however, the drawbridge is down at present, and a long stream of people, civil and military, are crossing and recrossing it, to and from the strada reale. for this street is the chief artery through which is ever circulating the placid current of valletteese life. soldiers in the varied uniforms of the regiments represented in the garrison are marching backwards and forwards, to or from parade, or to keep watch on the ramparts, or are taking their pleasure afoot, or in the neat little covered "carrozzellas" or cabs of the country, in which, unlike those of gibraltar of a similar build, a drive can be taken at the cost of the coin which, according to sydney smith, was struck to enable a certain thrifty race to be generous. sailors from the war-ships in the grand harbor, and merchant seamen on a run ashore, are utilizing what time they can spare from the grog shops in the lower town to see the sights of the place. cabmen and carmen driving cars without sides, and always rushing at the topmost speed of their little horses, scatter unwary pedestrians. native women, with that curious "faldetta," or one-sided hood to their black cloaks which is a characteristic of malta as the mantilla is of spain, pass side by side with english ladies in the latest of london fashions, or sturdy peasant women, returning from market, get sadly in the way of the british nursemaid dividing her attention in unequal proportions between her infantile charges and the guard marching for "sentry-go" to the ramparts. flocks of goats, their huge udders almost touching the ground, are strolling about to be milked at the doors of customers. maltese laborers, brown little men, bare-footed, broad-shouldered, and muscular, in the almost national dress of a glengarry cap, cotton trousers, and flannel shirt, with scarlet sash, coat over one arm, and little earrings, jostle the smart officers making for the union club, or the noisy "globe-trotter" just landed from the steamer which came to anchor an hour ago. a few snaky-eyed hindoos in gaily embroidered caps invite you to inspect their stock of ornamental wares, but except for an arab or two from tunis, or a few hulking turks from tripoli with pilot jackets over their barracans, the strada reale of valletta has little of that human picturesqueness imparted to the water-port street of gibraltar by the motley swarms of spaniards, and sicilians, and negroes, and moors, and english who fill it at all periods between morning gun-fire to the hour when the stranger is ousted from within the gates. malta being a most religiously roman catholic country, priests and robe-girded carmelites are everywhere plentiful, and all day long the worshipers entering and leaving the numerous churches, with the eternal "jingle-jingle" of their bells, remind one of rabelais's description of england in his day. at every turning the visitor is accosted by whining beggars whose pertinacity is only equaled by that of the boot-blacks and cabmen, who seem to fancy that the final purpose of man in malta is to ride in carrozzellas with shining shoes. in gibraltar we find a relief to the eye in the great rock towering overhead, the tree-embosomed cottages nestling on its slopes, or the occasional clumps of palms in the hollows. these are wanting to the chief strada of valletta. in architectural beauty the two streets cannot, however, be compared. the water-port is lined with houses, few of which are handsome and most of which are mean, while the scarcity of space tends to crowd the narrow "ramps" as thickly as any lane in valletta. it is seldom that the shops are better than those of a petty english town, and altogether the civil part of the rock fortresses has not lost the impress of having been reared by a people with but little of the world's wealth to spare, and kept alive by a population who have not a great deal to spend. the main street of valletta on the other hand is lined by good, and in most cases by handsome, houses, frequently with little covered stone balconies which lend a peculiar character to the buildings. the yellow limestone is also pleasant to look upon, while the many palaces which the comfort-loving knights erected for their shelter, impart to valletta the appearance of a "a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen." here on the right is the pretty opera house (open, in common with the private theaters, on sunday and saturday alike), and on the other side of the road the auberge of the language of provence, now occupied by the union club. a little farther on, in an open space shaded with trees, is the church of st. john, on which the knights lavished their riches, and still, notwithstanding the pillage of the french troops in 1798, rich in vessels of gold and silver, crosses, pixes, jewels, monuments chivalric emblazonments, paintings, carven stone and other ecclesiastical embellishments, though like the wealthy order of military monks, whose pride it was, the church of st. john is ostentatiously plain on the outside. the auberge d'auvergne, now the courts of justice, is on the other side of the street, and hard by, a building which was formerly the treasury of the knights, the storehouse into which was gathered the contributions of the commanderies throughout europe. the public library fronted by some trees a little way back from the road is interesting from its containing the books of the bailiff louis de tencin, the grand master de rohan (who erected it), and of many of the more lettered knights, besides a good collection of the island antiquities. close to it is the palace of the grand master, now the residence of the governor, or in part utilized as government offices. the courtyards, planted with oranges, euphorbias, hibiscus, and other greenery, and the walls covered with bougainvillia, have a delightfully cool appearance to the pedestrian who enters from the hot street; while the broad marble staircase, the corridors lined with portraits and men-at-arms, and pictures representing the warlike exploits of the knightly galleys, the armory full of ancient weapons, and majolica vases from the pharmacy, and the numerous relics of the former rulers of the island, are worthy of a long study by those interested in art or antiquity. the council chamber also merits a visit, for there may be seen the priceless hangings of brussels tapestry. and last of all, the idlest of tourists is not likely to neglect the hall of st. michael and st. george, the frescoes celebrating the famous deeds of the order of st. john, and the quaint clock in the interior court, which, according to maltese legend, was brought from rhodes when that island was abandoned after a resistance only less glorious than a victory. for, as charles v. exclaimed when he heard of the surrender which led to malta becoming the home of the knights, "there has been nothing in the world so well lost as rhodes." the main guard, with its pompous latin inscription recording how "magnæ et invictæ britanniæ melitensium amor et europæ vox has insulas confirmant an mdcccxiv," is exactly opposite the palace. but when the visitor sees the wealth of art which the knights were forced to leave behind them, he is apt to be puzzled how the maltese, who contributed not one baiocco to buy it, or to build these palaces or fortifications, could either through "amor," or that necessity which knows no law, make them over us to us, or how "magna et invicta britannia" could accept without compensation the property of the military monks, whose order, bereft of wealth and influence, still exists and claims with the acquiescence of at least one court to rank among the sovereign powers of christendom. the knights are, however, still the greatest personalities in malta. we come upon them, their eight-pointed cross and their works at every step. their ghosts still walk the highways. the names of the grand masters are immortalized in the cities they founded and in the forts they reared. their portraits in the rude art of the berlin lithographer hang on even the walls of the hotels. their ecclesiastical side is in evidence by the churches which they reared, by the hagiological names which they gave to many of the streets, by the saintly figures with which, in spite of three-fourths of a century of protestant rulers, still stand at the corners, and by the necessity which we have only recently found to come to an understanding with the pope as to the limits of the canon law in this most faithful portion of his spiritual dominions. on the other hand, the secular side of the order is quite as prominent. here, for instance, after descending some steps which serve as a footpath, we come to the fort of st. elmo, which terminates the strada reale. but long before there was any regular town on monte sceberras, when the capital was in the center of the island, this fortress on the point midway between the two harbors was a place round which the tide of battle often swirled, when paynim and christian fought for the mastery of the island. of all these sieges the greatest is that of 1565, a year before the town of valletta was laid out. twice previously, in 1546 and 1551, the turks had endeavored to expel the knights, but failed to effect a landing. but in the year mentioned sultan solyman, the magnificent, the same solyman who thirty-four years before had driven them from rhodes, determined to make one supreme effort to dislodge the order from their new home. the invading fleet consisted of a hundred and thirty-eight vessels under the renegade piali, and an army of thirty-three thousand men under the orders of mustafa pasha. these sea and land forces were soon afterwards increased by the arrival of two thousand five hundred resolute old corsairs brought from algiers by hassan pasha, and eighteen ships containing sixteen hundred men under the still more famous dragut, the pirate chief of tripoli, who, by the fortunes of war, was in a few years later fated to toil as a galley-slave in this very harbor. the siege lasted for nearly four months. every foot of ground was contested with heroic determination until it was evident that fort st. elmo could no longer hold out. then the knights, worn and wounded, and reduced to a mere remnant of their number, received the viaticum in the little castle chapel, and embracing each other went forth on the ramparts to meet whatever lot was in store for them. but st. angelo and senglea, at the end of the peninsula on which isola is now built, held out until, on the arrival of succor from sicily, the turks withdrew. of the forty thousand men who on the 18th of may had sat down before the castle, not ten thousand re-embarked; whilst of the eight or nine thousand defenders, barely six hundred were able to join in the te deum of thanks for the successful termination of what was one of the greatest struggles in ancient or modern times. then it was that "the most illustrous and most reverend lord, brother john de la valette," to quote his titles inscribed over the porta reale, determined to lay out the new city, so that, before twelve months passed, the primeval prophecy that there would be a time when every foot of land in monte sceberras would be worth an ounce of silver bade fair to come true. st. elmo is still the chief of the island fortresses, and the little chapel which the knights left to fall under the turkish scimitars is again in good preservation, after having been long forgotten under a pile of rubbish. but though churchmen and soldiers, the masters of malta were, if all tales are true, a good deal more _militaires_ than monks. eye-witnesses describe the knights as they sailed on a warlike expedition waving their hands to fair ladies on the shore. in their albergos or barracks the "languages" lived luxuriously, and though dueling was strictly prohibited, there is a narrow street, the strada stretta, running parallel with the reale, in which this extremely unecclesiastical mode of settling disputes was winked at. for by a pleasant fiction, any encounter within its limits was regarded as simply a casual difficulty occasioned by two fiery gentlemen accidentally jostling each other! turning into the strada mercanti, the san giacomio of a former nomenclature, we come upon more reminders of this picturesque brotherhood. for close by the hospital for incurables is the site of their cemetery, and farther up the steep street is the military hospital, which was founded by the grand master, fra luis de vasconçelos. this infirmary, as an old writer tells us, was in former days "the very glory of malta." every patient had two beds for change, and a closet with lock and key to himself. no more than two people were put in one ward, and these were waited upon by the "serving brothers," their food being brought to them on silver dishes, and everything else ordered with corresponding magnificence. nowadays, though scarcely so sumptuous, the hospital is still a noble institution, one of the rooms, four hundred and eighty feet in length, being accounted the longest in europe. but there are no silver dishes, and the nurses have ceased to be of knightly rank. the university, an institution which turns out doctors with a celerity which accounts for the number of them in the island, is an even less imposing building than the public pawnbroking establishment hard by, and neither is so noteworthy as the market, which is remarkable from a literary point of view as being perhaps the only edifice in valletta the founder of which has been content to inscribe his merits in the vulgar tongue. on the top of the hill, for we have been climbing all the time, is a house with a fine marble doorway, which also is the relic of the knights. for this building was the castellania, or prison, and the pillory in which prisoners did penance, and the little window from above which prisoners were suspended by the hands, are still, with the huge hook to which the rope was attached, to be seen by those who are curious in such disciplinary matters. but like the rock-hewn dungeons in which the knights kept their two thousand galley-slaves, in most cases turks and moors who had fallen in the way of their war-ships, which still exist in the rear of the dockyard terrace, such reminders of a cruel age and a stern order are depressing to the wanderer in search of the picturesque. he prefers to look at the auberge of the language of italy, where the royal engineers have their quarters, or at the palazzo parisi, opposite (it is a livery stable at present), where general bonaparte resided during that brief stay in malta which has served ever since to make the french name abhorred in the island, or at the auberge de castille, the noblest of all the knights' palaces, where the two scientific corps hold their hospitable mess. we have now tramped the entire length of the two chief longitudinal streets of malta, and have seen most of the buildings of much general interest. but in the strade mezzodi and britannica there are many private dwellings of the best description, and even some public ones, like the auberge de france (devoted to the head of the commissariat department), warrant examination from a historical if not from an architectural, point of view. all of these knightly hotels are worthy of notice. most of them are now appropriated to the needs of government offices or, like the auberge d'arragon (an episcopal residence), to the housing of local dignitaries. but where the auberge d'allemagne once stood the collegiate church of st. paul has been built, and if there ever was an auberge d'angleterre (for the language of england was suppressed when henry viii. confiscated the english commanderies and was early succeeded by that of bavaria), the building which bore her name was leveled when the new theater was built. it is nevertheless certain that the turcopolier or general of the horse was, until the reformation, selected from the language of england, just as that of provence always furnished the grand commander, france the grand hospitaller, italy the admiral, arragon the drapier, auvergne the commander, germany the grand bailiff, and castile the grand chancellor of the sovereign order, whose grand master held among other titles those of prince of malta and gozo. we are now at the upper barracca, one of those arcades erected as promenades by the knights, and still the favorite walk of the citizens in the cool of morning and evening. from this point also is obtained a good bird's-eye view of valletta and much of the neighboring country, and if the visitor continues his walk to st. andrew's bastion he may witness a panorama of both harbors; one, which the maltese affirm (and we are not called upon to contradict them), is surpassed by the bosphorus alone. it is at all events the most picturesque of the island views. there at a glance may be seen the two chief harbors alive with boats, sailing vessels, and steamers, from the huge ironclad to the noisy little launch. we then see that beside the main peninsula upon which valletta is built, and which divides the quarantine from the grand harbor, there are several other headlands projecting into these ports in addition to the island occupied by fort manoel and the lazaretto. these narrow peninsulas cut the havens into a host of subsidiary basins, bays, and creeks, while valletta itself has overflowed into the suburbs of floriana, sliema, and st. julian, and may by-and-by occupy tasbiesch and pieta; bighi, where the naval hospital is situated, and corradino, associated with gay memories of the racecourse, and the more sombre ones which pertain to the cemeteries and the prisons, all of which are centered in this quarter, where in former days the knights had their horse-breeding establishments and their game preserves. but there are certain suburbs of valletta which no good maltese will describe by so humble a name. these are the "three cities" of vittoriosa and senglea, built on the two peninsulas projecting into the grand harbor, and separated by the dockyard creek, and burmola or cosspicua, stretching back from the shore. these three "cities" are protected by the huge firenzuola and cottonera lines of fortifications, and as fort angelo, the most ancient of the maltese strongholds, and fort ricasoli, recalling the name of its builder, are among their castles, they hold their heads very high in malta. indeed, long before valletta was thought of, and when notabile was seen to be unfitted for their purpose, the knights took up their residence in borgo or the burgh, which, as the statue of victory still standing announces, was dignified by the name of citta vittoriosa after their victory over the turks. strada antico palazzo del governatore recalls the old palace which once stood in this street, and indeed until 1571 this now poor town was the seat of government. antique buildings, like the nunnery of santa scolastica, once a hospital, and the inquisitor's palace, now the quarters of the english garrison, are witnesses to its fatten dignity. burmola is also a city of old churches, and senglea named after the grand master de la sengle, though at present a place of little consequence, contains plenty of architectural proofs that when its old name of "chersoneso," or the peninsula, was changed to isola, or "the unconquered," this "city," with fort michael to do its fighting, played in malta militant a part almost as important as it does nowadays when its dockyard and arsenal are its chief titles to fame. turning our survey inland, we see from the barracca a rolling country, whitish, dry, and uninviting, dotted with white rocks projecting above the surface; white little villages, each with its church and walled fields; and topping all, on the summit of a rising ground, a town over which rise the spires of a cathedral. this is citta vecchia, the "old city" as it was called when the capital was transferred to valletta, though the people round about still call it by the saracenic name of "medina," (the town), the more modern designation of "notabile" being due to a complimentary remark of alfonso the magnanimous, king of castile. no town in malta is more ancient. here, we know from the famous oration of cicero, that verres, prætor of sicily, established some manufactories for cotton goods, out of which were made women's dresses of extraordinary magnificence, and here also the same voluptuous ruler did a reprehensible amount of plundering from temples and the "abodes of wealthy and honorable citizens." in their time-honored capital the grand masters had to be inaugurated, and in its cathedral every bishop of malta must still be consecrated. but the glory of notabile is its memories, for in all christendom there is no more silent city than the one towards which we creep by means of the island railway which has of late years shortened the eight miles between it and valletta. every rood, after leaving the cave-like station hollowed out of the soft solid rock, and the tunnels under the fortifications, seems sleepier and sleepier. every few minutes we halt at a white-washed shed hard by a white-washed "casal." and all the "casals" seem duplicates of each other. the white streets of these villages are narrow, and the people few. but the church is invariably disproportionately large, well built, and rich in decorations, while the shops in the little square are much poorer than people who support so fine a church ought to patronize. there is hamrun, with its apostolic institute directed by algerian missionaries, misada in the valley, and birchircara. casal curmi, where the cattle market is held, is seen in the distance, and at lia and balzan we are among the orange and lemon gardens for which these villages are famous. the san antonio palace, with its pleasant grounds, forms a relief to the eye. at attard, "the village of roses," the aqueduct which supplies valletta with the water of diar handur comes in sight, and then, at san salvador, the train begins the steep pull which ends at the base of the hill on which notabile is built. on this slope are little terraced fields and remains of what must at one time have been formidable fortifications. but all is crumbling now. a few of the valletta merchants are taking advantage of the railway by building country houses, and some of the old maltese nobility cling to the town associated with their quondam glory. but its decaying mansions with their mouldering coats of arms, palaces appropriated to prosaic purposes, ramparts from which for ages the clash of arms has departed, and streets silent except for the tread of the british soldiers stationed there or the mumble of the professional beggar, tell a tale of long-departed greatness. a statue of juno is embedded in the gateway, and in the shed-like museum have been collected a host of phoenician, roman, and other remains dug out of the soil of the city. maltese boys pester us to buy copper coins of the knights which are possibly honest, and their parents produce silver ones which are probably apocryphal. in notabile itself there is not, however, a great deal to look at, though from the summit of the sanatorium, of old the courts of justice (and there are dreadful dungeons underneath it still), a glance may be obtained over the entire island. to the prosaic eye it looks rather dry to be the "fior del mondo," the flower of the world, as the patriotic maltese terms the land which he leaves with regret and returns to with joy. there to the south lies verdala palace, and the boschetto, a grove in much request for picnic parties from valletta, and beyond both, the inquisitor's summer palace, close to where the sea spray is seen flying against the rugged cliffs. the bingemma hills, thick with phoenician tombs, are seen to the west, and if the pedestrian cares he may visit the old rock fortress of kala ta bahria, imtarfa, where stood the temple of proserpine, and imtahleb near the seashore, where in the season wild strawberries abound. musta, with its huge domed church, is prominent enough to the northeast, while with a glass it is not difficult to make out zebbar and zeitun, zurrico, paola, and other villages of the southeastern coast scattered through a region where remains of the past are very plentiful. for here are the ruins of the temples of hagiar khim and mnaidra, rude prehistoric monuments, and on the shore of the marsa scirocco (a bay into which the hot wind of africa blows direct), is a megalithic wall believed to be the last of the temple of melkarte, the tyrian hercules. but in notabile, far before apollo and proserpine, whose marble temples stood here, before even the knights, whose three centuries of iron rule have a singular fascination for the maltese, there is a name very often in many mouths. and that is "san paolo." saint paul is in truth the great man of malta, and the people make very much of him. he is almost as popular a personage as sir thomas maitland, the autocratic "king tom," of whose benevolent despotism and doughty deeds also one is apt in time to get a little tired. churches and streets and cathedrals are dedicated to the apostle of the gentiles, and from the summit of the sanatorium a barefooted maltese points out "the certain creek with a shore" in which he was wrecked, the island of salmun, on which there is a statue of him, and the church erected in his honor. it is idle to hint to this pious son of citta vecchia that it is doubtful whether paul was ever wrecked in malta at all, that not unlikely the scene of that notable event was melita, in the gulf of ragusa. are there not hard by serpents turned into stone, if no living serpents to bite anybody, and a miraculous fountain which bursts forth at the apostle's bidding? and is not "the tempestuous wind called euroklydon" blowing at this very moment? and in the cathedral we learn for the first time that publius, on the site of whose house it is built, became the first bishop of malta. for is not his martyrdom sculptured in marble, and painted on canvas? and by-and-by we see the grotto in which st. paul did three months' penance, though the reason is not explained, and over it the chapel raised to the memory of the converted roman governor, and not far away the catacombs in which the early christians sheltered themselves, though whether there is an underground passage from there to valletta, as historians affirm, is a point in which our barefooted commentator is not agreed. all these are to him irreverent doubts. notabile, with its cathedral, and convents, and monasteries, its church of st. publius, the "stone of which never grows less," the seminary for priests, the bishop's palace and the bishop's hospital, is no place for scepticism touching saint paul and his voyages. any such unbeliefs we had better carry elsewhere. the day is hot and the old city is somnolent, and the talk is of the past. at the wicket gate of the little station at the hill foot the engine is, at least, of the present. and as we slowly steam into valletta, and emerge into the busy street, we seem to have leapt in an hour from the middle ages into the twentieth century. the band is playing in the palace square, and the politicians are in procession over some event with which we as seekers after the picturesque are not concerned. but in valletta we are in the land of living men. behind us is a city of the dead, and around it lie villages which seem never to have been alive. xiii sicily scylla and charybdis--messina, the chief commercial center of sicily--the magnificent ruins of the greek theater at taormina--omnipresence of mt. etna--approach to syracuse--the famous latomia del paradiso--girgenti, the city of temples--railway route to palermo--mosaics--cathedral and abbey of monreale--monte pellegrino at the hour of sunset. to the traveller who proposes to enter sicily by the favorite sea-route from naples to messina the approach to the island presents a scene of singular interest and beauty. a night's voyage from the sunny bay which sleeps at the foot of vesuvius suffices to bring him almost within the shadow of etna. by daybreak he has just passed the punta del faro, the lighthoused promontory at the extreme northeastern angle of this three-cornered isle, the trinacria of the ancients, and is steaming into the straits. far to his left he can see, with the eye of faith at any rate, the rock of scylla jutting out from the calabrian coast, while the whirlpool of charybdis, he will do well to believe, is eddying and foaming at the foot of the pharos a few hundred yards to his right. here let him resolutely locate the fabled monster of the gaping jaws into which were swept those luckless mariners of old whose dread of scylla drove them too near to the sicilian shore. modern geographers may maintain (as what will they not maintain?) that charybdis should be identified with the garofalo, the current which sweeps round the breakwater of messina seven miles to the south; but circe distinctly told ulysses that the two monsters were not a "bowshot apart"; and the perfectly clear and straightforward account given of the matter by æneas to dido renders it impossible to doubt that scylla and charybdis faced each other at the mouth of the straits. the traveller will be amply justified in believing that he has successfully negotiated the passage between these two terrors as soon as he has left the pharos behind him and is speeding along the eastern coast of the island towards the city of messina. very bold and impressive grows the island scenery under the gradually broadening daylight. tier on tier above him rise the bare, brown hill-slopes, spurs of the great mountain pyramid which he is approaching. these tumbled masses of the mountains, deepening here where the night shadow still lingers into downright black, and reddening there where they "take the morning" to the color of rusty iron, proclaim their volcanic character, to all who are familiar with the signs thereof, unmistakably enough. just such a ferruginous face does nature turn towards you as you drop down at twilight past the isleta of las palmas, in gran canaria, or work your way from the eastern to the western coast of teneriffe, round the spreading skirts of the peak. rock scenery of another character is visible on the left, among the calabrian mountains, dwarfed somewhat by the nearer as well as loftier heights of the island opposite, but bearing no mean part in the composition of the landand sea-scape, nevertheless. mile after mile the view maintains its rugged beauty, and when at last the town and harbor of messina rise in sight, and the fort of castellaccio begins to fill the eye, to the exclusion of the natural ramparts of the hills, the traveller will be fain to admit that few islands in the world are approached through scenery so romantic and so well attuned to its historic associations. there are those who find messina disappointing, and there is no doubt that to quit the waters of a rock-embosomed strait for the harbor of a large commercial seaport possessing no special claim to beauty of situation, is to experience a certain effect of disenchantment. it would not be fair, however, to hold the town, as a town, responsible for this. it is only some such jewel as naples or as algiers that could vie with such a setting. messina is not an algiers or a naples; it is only an honest, ancient, prosperous, active, fairly clean, and architecturally unimpressive town. the chief commercial center of sicily, with upwards of eighty thousand inhabitants, a cathedral, an archbishop, and a university, it can afford, its inhabitants perhaps believe, to dispense with æsthetic attractions. but its spacious quays, its fine and curiously shaped port, the harbor of the sickle as it was called by the ancients when after it they named the city "zancle," have an interest of their own if they are without much claim to the picturesque; and the view from the faro grande on the curve of the sickle, with the sicilian mountains behind, the calabrian rocks in front, and the straits to the right and left of the spectator, is not to be despised. still, messina is not likely to detain any pleasure-tourist long, especially with taormina, the gem of the island, and one might almost say, indeed, of all italy, awaiting him at only the distance of a railway journey of some sixty to a hundred miles. the line from messina to giardini, the station for taormina, and the spot whence garibaldi crossed to calabria in the autumn of 1860, skirts the sea-coast, burrowing under headlands and spanning dry river-beds for a distance of thirty miles, amid the scenery which has been already viewed from the straits, but which loses now from its too close neighborhood to the eye. the rock-built town of ancient taormina is perched upon a steep and craggy bluff some four hundred feet above the railway line, and is approached by an extremely circuitous road of about three miles in length. short cuts there are for the youthful, the impetuous, and the sound in wind; but even these fortunate persons might do worse than save their breath and restrain their impatience to reach their destination, if only for the sake of the varying panorama which unfolds itself as they ascend from level to level on their winding way. there can be no denying that taormina stands nobly and confronts the straits with a simple dignity that many greater and even higher cities might well envy. to see it from a favoring angle of the battlemented road, with the southern sunlight bathing its bright white walls and broken lines of housetops, with the tower of sant' agostino traced against the cone of etna, and the wall that skirts it almost trembling on the utmost verge of the cliff, while at the foot of the declivity the straits trend southward in "tender, curving lines of creamy spray," to see this is at least to admit that some short cuts are not worth taking, and that the bridle-path up the hillside might well be left to those animals for whose use it was constructed, and who are generally believed to prefer an abridgment of their journey to any conceivable enhancement of its picturesque attractions. [illustration] at taormina one may linger long. the pure, inspiriting air of its lofty plateau, and the unequaled beauty of the prospect which it commands, would alone be sufficient to stay the hurried footsteps of even the most time-pressed of "globe-trotters"; but those who combine a love of scenery with a taste for archæology and the classical antique will find it indeed a difficult place to leave. for, a little way above the town, and in the center of an exquisite landscape stand the magnificent ruins of the greek theater, its auditorium, it is true, almost leveled with the plain, but more perfect as to the remains of its stage and proscenium than any other in sicily, and, with one exception, in the world. but there is no need to be a scholar or an antiquarian to feel the extraordinary fascination of the spot. nowhere among all the relics of bygone civilizations have time and nature dealt more piously with the work of man. every spring and summer that have passed over those mouldering columns and shattered arches have left behind them their tribute of clasping creeper and clambering wild flower and softly draping moss. boulder and plinth in common, the masonry alike of nature and of man, have mellowed into the same exquisite harmony of greys and greens; and the eye seeks in vain to distinguish between the handiwork of the great mother and those monuments of her long-dead children which she has clothed with an immortality of her own. apart, however, from the indescribable charm of its immediate surroundings, the plateau of the theater must fix itself in the memory of all who have entered sicily by way of messina as having afforded them their first "clear" view of etna, their first opportunity, that is to say, of looking at the majestic mountain unintercepted at any point of its outline or mass by objects on a lower level. the whole panorama indeed from this point is magnificent. to the left, in the foreground, rise the heights of castiglione from the valley of the alcantara; while, as the eye moves round the prospect from left to right, it lights in succession on the hermitage of s. maria della rocca, the castle of taormina, the overhanding hill of mola, and monte venere towering above it. but, dominating the whole landscape, and irresistibly recalling to itself the gaze which wanders for a moment to the nearer chain of mountains or the blue calabrian hills across the strait, arises the never-to-be-forgotten pyramid of etna, a mountain unrivaled in its combination of majesty and grace, in the soft symmetry of its "line," and the stern contrast between its lava-scarred sides, with their associations of throe and torture, and the eternal peace of its snow-crowned head. it will be seen at a closer view from catania, and, best of all, on the journey from that place to syracuse; but the first good sight of it from taormina, at any rate when weather and season have been favorable, is pretty sure to become an abiding memory. twenty miles farther southwards along the coast lie the town and baths of aci reale, a pleasant resort in the "cure" season, but to others than invalids more interesting in its associations with theocritus and ovid, with "homer the handel of epos, and handel the homer of song;" in a word, with acis and galatea, and polyphemus, and the much-enduring ulysses. aci castello, a couple of miles or so down the coast, is, to be precise, the exact spot which is associated with these very old-world histories, though polyphemus's sheep-run probably extended far along the coast in both directions, and the legend of the giant's defeat and discomfiture by the hero of the odyssey is preserved in the nomenclature of the rocky chain which juts out at this point from the sicilian shore. the scogli dei ciclopi are a fine group of basaltic rocks, the biggest of them some two hundred feet in height and two thousand feet in circumference, no doubt "the stone far greater than the first" with which polyphemus took his shot at the retreating wanderer, and which "all but struck the end of the rudder." it is a capital "half-brick" for a giant to "heave" at a stranger, whether the cyclops did, in fact, heave it or not; and, together with its six companions, it stands out bravely and with fine sculpturesque effect against the horizon. a few miles farther on is catania, the second city in population and importance of sicily, but, except for one advantage which would give distinction to the least interesting of places, by no means the second in respect of beauty. as a town, indeed, it is commonplace. its bay, though of ample proportions, has no particular grace of contour; and even the clustering masts in its busy harbor scarcely avail to break the monotony of that strip of houses on the flat seaboard, which, apart from its surroundings, is all that constitutes catania. but with etna brooding over it day and night, and the town lying outstretched and nestling between the two vast arms which the giant thrusts out towards the sea on each side, catania could not look wholly prosaic and uninteresting even if she tried. we must again return to the mountain, for etna, it must be remembered, is a persistent feature, is _the_ persistent feature of the landscape along nearly the whole eastern coast of sicily from punta di faro to the cape of santa croce, if not to the promontory of syracuse. its omnipresence becomes overawing as one hour of travel succeeds another and the great mountain is as near as ever. for miles upon miles by this southward course it haunts the traveller like a reproving conscience. each successive stage on his journey gives him only a different and not apparently more distant view. its height, ten thousand feet, although, of course, considerable, seems hardly sufficient to account for this perpetual and unabating prominence, which, however, is partly to be explained by the outward trend taken by the sea-coast after we pass catania, and becoming more and more marked during the journey from that city to syracuse. there could be no better plan of operations for one who wishes to view the great mountain thoroughly, continuously, protractedly, and at its best, than to await a favorable afternoon, and then to take the journey in question by railway, so timing it as to reach the tongue of santa croce about sunset. from catania to lentini the traveller has etna, wherever visible, on his right; at lentini the line of railway takes a sharp turn to the left, and, striking the coast at agnone, hugs it all along the northern shore of the promontory, terminating with cape santa croce, upon approaching which point it doubles back upon itself, to follow the "re-entering angle" of the cape, and then, once more turning to the left, runs nearly due southward along the coast to syracuse. throughout the twenty miles or so from lentini to augusta, beneath the promontory of santa croce, etna lies on the traveller's left, with the broad blue bay fringed for part of the way by a mile-wide margin of gleaming sand between him and it. then the great volcanic cone, all its twenty miles from summit to sea-coast foreshortened into nothingness by distance, seems to be rising from the very sea; its long-cooled lava streams might almost be mingling with the very waters of the bay. as the rays of the westering sun strike from across the island upon silver-gray sand and blue-purple sea and russet-iron mountain slopes, one's first impulse is to exclaim with wordsworth, in vastly differing circumstances, that "earth hath not anything to show more fair." but it has. for he who can prolong his view of the mountain until after the sun has actually sunk will find that even the sight he has just witnessed can be surpassed. he must wait for the moment when the silver has gone out of the sand, and the purple of the sea has changed to gray, and the russet of etna's lava slopes is deepening into black; for that is also the moment when the pink flush of the departed sunset catches its peak and closes the symphony of color with a chord more exquisitely sweet than all. from cape santa croce to syracuse the route declines a little perhaps in interest. the great volcano which has filled the eye throughout the journey is now less favorably placed for the view, and sometimes, as when the railway skirts the bay of megara in a due southward direction, is altogether out of sight. nor does the approach to syracuse quite prepare one for the pathetic charm of this most interesting of the great, dead, half-deserted cities of the ancient world, or even for the singular beauty of its surroundings. you have to enter the inhabited quarter itself, and to take up your abode on that mere sherd and fragment of old greek syracuse, the island of ortygia, to which the present town is confined (or rather, you have to begin by doing this, and then to sally forth on a long walk of exploration round the _contorni_, to trace the line of the ancient fortifications, and to map out as best you may the four other quarters, each far larger than ortygia, which, long since given over to orange-gardens and scattered villas and farmhouses, were once no doubt well-peopled districts of the ancient city), ere you begin either to discover its elements of material beauty or to feel anything of its spiritual magic. it is hard to believe that this decayed and apparently still decaying little island town was once the largest of the hellenic cities, twenty miles, according to strabo, in circumference, and even in the time of cicero containing in one of its now deserted quarters "a very large forum, most beautiful porticoes, a highly decorated town hall, a most spacious senate house, and a superb temple of jupiter olympius." a spoiler more insatiable than verres has, alas! carried off all these wonders of art and architecture, and of most of them not even a trace of the foundations remains. of the magnificent forum a single unfluted column appears to be the solitary relic. the porticoes, the town hall, the senate house, the temple of the olympian jove are irrecoverable even by the most active architectural imagination. but the west wall of the district which contained these treasures is still partially traceable, and in the adjoining quarter of the ancient city we find ourselves in its richest region both of the archæological and the picturesque. for here is the famous latomia del paradiso, quarry, prison, guard-house, and burial-place of the syracusan greek, and the yet more famous theater, inferior to that of taormina in the completeness of the stage and proscenium, but containing the most perfectly preserved auditorium in the world. the entrance to the latomia, that gigantic, ear-shaped orifice hewn out of the limestone cliff, and leading into a vast whispering-chamber, the acoustic properties of which have caused it to be identified with the (historic or legendary) ear of dionysius, has a strange, wild impressiveness of its own. but in beauty though not in grandeur it is excelled by another abandoned limestone quarry in the neighborhood, which has been converted by its owner into an orangery. this lies midway between the latomia del paradiso and the quarry of the cappuccini, and is in truth a lovely retreat. over it broods the perfect stillness that never seems so deep as in those deserted places which have once been haunts of busy life. it is rich in the spiritual charm of natural beauty and the sensuous luxury of sub-tropical culture: close at hand the green and gold of orange trees, in the middle distance the solemn plumes of the cypresses, and farther still the dazzling white walls of the limestone which the blue sky bends down to meet. to pass from the quarries to the remains of the greek theater hard by is in some measure to exchange the delight of the eye for the subtler pleasures of mental association. not that the concentric curves of these moldering and moss-lined stone benches are without their appeal to the senses. on the contrary, they are beautiful in themselves, and, like all architectural ruins, than which no animate things in nature more perfectly illustrate the scientific doctrine of "adaptation to environment," they harmonize deliciously in line and tone with their natural surroundings. yet to most people, and especially so to those of the contemplative habit, the greek theater at syracuse, like the amphitheaters of rome and verona, will be most impressive at moments when the senses are least active and the imagination busiest. it is when we abstract the mind from the existing conditions of the ruin; it is when we "restore" it by those processes of mental architecture which can never blunder into vandalism; it is when we re-people its silent, time-worn benches with the eager, thronging life of twenty centuries ago, that there is most of magic in its spell. and here surely imagination has not too arduous a task, so powerfully is it assisted by the wonderful completeness of these remains. more than forty tiers of seats shaped out of the natural limestone of the rock can still be quite distinctly traced; and though their marble facings have of course long moldered into dust, whole _cunei_ of them are still practically as uninjured by time, still as fit for the use for which they were intended, as when the syracusans of the great age of attic drama flocked hither to hear the tragedies of that poet whom they so deeply reverenced that to be able to recite his verse was an accomplishment rewarded in the prisoners who possessed it by liberation from bondage. to the lover of classical antiquity syracuse will furnish "moments" in abundance; but at no other spot either in ortygia itself or in these suburbs of the modern city, not at the fountain of arethusa on the brink of the great port; not in the temple of minerva, now the cathedral, with its doric columns embedded in the ignominy of plaster; not in that wildest and grandest of those ancient syracusan quarries, the latomia dei cappuccini, where the ill-fated remnant of the routed army of nicias is supposed to have expiated in forced labor the failure of the sicilian expedition, will he find it so easy to rebuild the ruined past as here on this desolate plateau, with these perfect monuments of the immortal attic stage around him, and at his feet the town, the harbor, the promontory of plemmyrium, the blue waters of the ionian sea. it is time, however, to resume our journey and to make for that hardly less interesting or less beautifully situated town of sicily which is usually the next halting-place of the traveller. the route to girgenti from syracuse is the most circuitous piece of railway communication in the island. to reach our destination it is necessary to retrace our steps almost the whole way back to catania. at bicocca, a few miles distant from that city, the line branches off into the interior of the country for a distance of some fifty or sixty miles, when it is once more deflected, and then descends in a southwesterly direction towards the coast. at a few miles from the sea, within easy reach of its harbor, porto empedocle, lies girgenti. the day's journey will have been an interesting one. throughout its westward course the line, after traversing the fertile plain of catania, the rich grain-bearing district which made sicily the granary of the roman world, ascends gradually into a mountainous region and plunges between calascibetta and castrogiovanni into a tortuous ravine, above which rise towering the two last-named heights. the latter of the two is planted on the site of the plain of enna, the scene of the earliest abduction recorded in history. flowers no longer flourish in the same abundance on the meads from which persephone was carried off by the dark king of hades; but the spot is still fair and fertile, truly a "green navel of the isle," the central omphalos from which the eye ranges northward, eastward, and south-westward over each expanse of trinacria's triple sea. but those who do not care to arrest their journey for the sake of sacrificing to demeter, or of enjoying the finest, in the sense of the most extensive, view in sicily, may yet admire the noble situation of the rock-built town of castrogiovanni, looking down upon the railway from its beetling crag. girgenti, the city of temples, the richest of all places in the world save one in monuments of pagan worship, conceals its character effectually enough from him who enters it from the north. within the precincts of the existing city there is little sign to be seen of its archæological treasures, and, to tell the truth, it has but few attractions of its own. agrigentum, according to pindar "the most beautiful city of mortals," will not so strike a modern beholder; but that, no doubt, is because, like syracuse and other famous seats of ancient art and religious reverence, it has shrunk to dimensions so contracted as to leave all the riches of those stately edifices to which it owed the fame of its beauty far outside its present boundaries. nothing, therefore, need detain the traveller in the town itself (unless, indeed, he would snatch a brief visit to the later-built cathedral, remarkable for nothing but the famous marble sarcophagus with its relief of the myth of hippolytus), and he will do well to mount the rupe atenea without delay. the view, however, in every direction is magnificent, the town to the right of the spectator and behind him, the sea in front, and the rolling, ruin-dotted plain between. from this point girgenti itself looks imposing enough with the irregular masses of its roofs and towers silhouetted against the sky. but it is the seaward view which arrests and detains the eye. hill summit or hotel window, it matters little what or where your point of observation is, you have but to look from the environs of girgenti towards porto empedocle, a few miles to the south, and you bring within your field of vision a space of a few dozen acres in extent which one may reasonably suppose to have no counterpart in any area of like dimensions on the face of the globe. it is a garden of moldering shrines, a positive orchard of shattered porticoes and broken column-shafts, and huge pillars prostrate at the foot of their enormous plinths. you can count and identify and name them all even from where you stand. ceres and proserpine, juno lacinia, concord, hercules, æsculapius, jupiter olympius, castor and pollux, all are visible at once, all recognizable and numerable from east to west in their order as above. it is a land of ruined temples, and, to all appearance, of nothing else. one can just succeed, indeed, in tracing the coils of the railway as it winds like a black snake towards porto empedocle, but save that there are no signs of life. one descries no wagon upon the roads, no horse in the furrows, no laborer among the vines. girgenti itself, with its hum and clatter, lies behind you; no glimpse of life or motion is visible on the quays of the port. all seems as desolate as those gray and moldering fanes of the discrowned gods, a solitude which only changes in character without deepening in intensity as the eye travels across the foam-fringed coast-line out on the sailless sea. there is a strange beauty in this silent pantheon of dead deities, this landscape which might almost seem to be still echoing the last wail of the dying pan; and it is a beauty of death and desolation to which the like of nature, here especially abounding, contributes not a little by contrast. for nowhere in sicily is the country-side more lavishly enriched by the olive. its contorted stem and quivering, silvery foliage are everywhere. olives climb the hill-slopes in straggling files; olives cluster in twos and threes and larger groups upon the level plain; olives trace themselves against the broken walls of the temples, and one catches the flicker of their branches in the sunlight that streams through the roofless peristyles. from rupe atenea out across the plain to where the eye lights upon the white loops of the road to porto empedocle one might almost say that every object which is not a temple or a fragment of a temple is an olive tree. by far the most interesting of the ruins from the archæologist's point of view is that of the temple of concord, which, indeed, is one of the best-preserved in existence, thanks, curiously enough, to the religious philistinism which in the middle ages converted it into a christian church. it was certainly not in the spirit of its tutelary goddess that it was so transformed: nothing, no doubt, was farther from the thoughts of those who thus appropriated the shrine of concord than to illustrate the doctrine of the unity of religion. but art and archæology, if not romance, have good reason to thank them that they "took over" the building on any grounds, for it is, of course, to this circumstance that we owe its perfect condition of preservation, and the fact that all the details of the doric style as applied to religious architecture can be studied in this temple while so much of so many of its companion fanes has crumbled into indistinguishable ruin. concordia has remained virtually intact through long centuries under the homely title of "the church of st. gregory of the turnips," and it rears its stately façade before the spectator in consequence with architrave complete, a magnificent hexastyle of thirty-four columns, its lateral files of thirteen shafts apiece receding in noble lines of perspective. juno lacinia, or juno lucinda (for it may have been either as the "lacinian goddess" or as the goddess of childbed that juno was worshipped here), an older fane than concordia, though the style had not yet entered on its decline when the latter temple was built, is to be seen hard by, a majestic and touching ruin. it dates from the fifth century b. c., and is therefore doric of the best period. earthquakes, it seems, have co-operated with time in the work of destruction, and though twenty-five whole pillars are left standing, the façade, alas! is represented only by a fragment of architrave. more extensive still have been the ravages inflicted on the temple of hercules by his one unconquerable foe. this great and famous shrine, much venerated of old by the agrigentines, and containing that statue of the god which the indefatigable "collector" verres vainly endeavored to loot, is now little more than a heap of tumbled masonry, with one broken column-shaft alone still standing at one extremity of its site. but it is among the remains of the ancient sanctuary of zeus, all unfinished, though that edifice was left by its too ambitious designers, that we get the best idea of the stupendous scale on which those old-world religious architects and masons worked. the ruin itself has suffered cruelly from the hand of man; so much so, indeed, that little more than the ground plan of the temple is to be traced by the lines of column bases, vast masses of its stone having been removed from its site to be used in the construction of the mole. but enough remains to show the gigantic scale on which the work was planned and partially carried out. the pillars which once stood upon those bases were twenty feet in circumference, or more than two yards in diameter and each of their flutings forms a niche big enough to contain a man! yon caryatid, who has been carefully and skillfully pieced together from the fragments doubtless of many caryatids, and who now lies, hands under head, supine and staring at the blue sky above him, is more than four times the average height of a man. from the crown of his bowed head to his stony soles he measures twenty-five feet, and to watch a tourist sitting by or on him and gazing on girgenti in the distance is to be visited by a touch of that feeling of the irony of human things to which shelley gives expression in his "ozymandias." the railway route from girgenti to palermo is less interesting than that from catania to girgenti. it runs pretty nearly due south and north across the island from shore to shore, through a country mountainous indeed, as is sicily everywhere, but not marked by anything particularly striking in the way of highland scenery. at termini we strike the northern coast, and the line branches off to the west. another dozen miles or so brings us to santa flavia, whence it is but half an hour's walk to the ruins of soluntum, situated on the easternmost hill of the promontory of catalfano. the coast-view from this point is striking, and on a clear day the headland of cefalu, some twenty miles away to the eastward, is plainly visible. ten more miles of "westing" and we approach palermo, the sicilian capital, a city better entered from the sea, to which it owes its beauty as it does its name. to the traveller fresh from girgenti and its venerable ruins, or from syracuse with its classic charm, the first impressions of palermo may very likely prove disappointing. especially will they be so if he has come with a mind full of historic enthusiasm and a memory laden with the records of greek colonization, saracen dominion, and norman conquest, and expecting to find himself face to face with the relics and remainder of at any rate the modern period of the three. for palermo is emphatically what the guide-books are accustomed to describe as "a handsome modern city"; which means, as most people familiar with the latin countries are but too well aware, a city as like any number of other continental cities, built and inhabited by latin admirers and devotees of parisian "civilization," as "two peas in a pod." in the sicilian capital the passion for the monotonous magnificence of the boulevard has been carried to an almost amusing pitch. palermo may be regarded from this point of view as consisting of two most imposing boulevards of approximately equal length, each bisecting the city with scrupulous equality from east to west and from north to south, and intersecting each other in its exact center at the mathematically precise angle of ninety degrees. you stand at the porta felice, the water-gate of the city, with your back to the sea, and before you, straight as a die, stretches the handsome via vittorio emanuele for a mile or more ahead. you traverse the handsome via vittorio emanuele for half its length and you come to the quattro canti, a small octagonal piazza which boasts itself to be the very head of palermo, and from this intersection of four cross-roads, you see stretching to right and left of you the equally handsome via macqueda. walk down either of these two great thoroughfares, the macqueda or the vittorio emanuele, and you will be equally satisfied with each; the only thing which may possibly mar your satisfaction will be your consciousness that you would be equally satisfied with the other, and, indeed, that it requires an effort of memory to recollect in which of the two you are. there is nothing to complain of in the architecture or decoration of the houses. all is correct, regular, and symmetrical in line, bright and cheerful in color, and, as a whole, absolutely wanting in individuality and charm. it is, however, of course impossible to kill an ancient and interesting city altogether with boulevards. palermo, like every other city, has its "bits," to be found without much difficulty by anyone who will quit the beaten track of the two great thoroughfares and go a-questing for them himself. he may thus find enough here and there to remind him that he is living on the "silt" of three, nay, four civilizations, on a fourfold formation to which greek and roman, saracen and norman, have each contributed its successive layer. it need hardly be said that the latter has left the deepest traces of any. the palazzo reale, the first of the palermitan sights to which the traveller is likely to bend his way, will afford the best illustration of this. saracenic in origin, it has received successive additions from half-a-dozen norman princes, from robert guiscard downwards, and its chapel, the cappella palatina, built by roger ii. in the early part of the twelfth century, is a gem of decorative art which would alone justify a journey to sicily to behold. the purely architectural beauties of the interior are impressive enough, but the eye loses all sense of them among the wealth of their decoration. the stately files of norman arches up the nave would in any other building arrest the gaze of the spectator, but in the cappella palatina one can think of nothing but mosaics. mosaics are everywhere, from western door to eastern window, and from northern to southern transept wall. a full-length, life-sized saint in mosaic grandeur looks down upon you from every interval between the arches of the nave, and medallions of saints in mosaic, encircled with endless tracery and arabesque, form the inner face of every arch. mosaic angels float with outstretched arms above the apse. a colossal madonna and bambino, overshadowed by a hovering père eternel, peer dimly forth in mosaic across the altar through the darkness of the chancel. the ground is golden throughout, and the somber richness of the effect is indescribable. in palermo and its environs, in the church of martorana, and in the cathedral of monreale, no less than here, there is an abundance of that same decoration, and the mosaics of the latter of the two edifices above mentioned are held to be the finest of all; but it is by those of the cappella palatina, the first that he is likely to make the acquaintance of, that the visitor, not being an expert or connoisseur in this particular species of art-work, will perhaps be the most deeply impressed. the palazzo reale may doubtless too be remembered by him, as affording him the point of view from which he has obtained his first idea of the unrivaled situation of palermo. from the flat roof of the observatory, fitted up in the tower of s. ninfa, a noble panorama lies stretched around us. the spectator is standing midway between amphitrite and the golden shell that she once cast in sport upon the shore. behind him lies the conca d'oro, with the range of mountains against which it rests, grifone and cuccio, and the billieni hills, and the road to monreale winding up the valley past la rocca; in front lies the noble curve of the gulf, from cape mongerbino to the port, the bold outlines of monte pellegrino, the bay of mondello still farther to the left, and capo di gallo completing the coast-line with its promontory dimly peering through the haze. palermo, however, does not perhaps unveil the full beauty of its situation elsewhere than down at the sea's edge, with the city nestling in the curve behind one and pellegrino rising across the waters in front. but the environs of the city, which are of peculiar interest and attraction, invite us, and first among these is monreale, at a few miles' distance, a suburb to which the traveller ascends by a road commanding at every turn some new and striking prospect of the bay. on one hand as he leaves the town, lies the capuchin monastery, attractive with its catacombs of mummified ex-citizens of palermo to the lover of the gruesome rather than of the picturesque. farther on is the pretty villa tasca, then la rocca, whence by a winding road of very ancient construction we climb the royal mount crowned by the famous cathedral and benedictine abbey of monreale. here more mosaics, as has been said, as fine in quality and in even greater abundance than those which decorate the interior of the cappella palatina; they cover, it is said, an area of seventy thousand four hundred square feet. from the cathedral we pass into the beautiful cloisters, and thence into the fragrant orange-garden, from which another delightful view of the valley towards palermo is obtained. san martino, the site of a suppressed benedictine monastery, is the next spot of interest. a steep path branching off to the right from monreale leads to a deserted fort, named il castellaccio, from which the road descends as far as s. martino, whence a pleasant journey back to palermo is made through the picturesque valley of bocca di falco. the desire to climb a beautiful mountain is as strong as if climbing it were not as effectual a way of hiding its beauties as it would be to sit upon its picture; and monte pellegrino, sleeping in the sunshine, and displaying the noble lines of what must surely be one of the most picturesque mountains in the world, is likely enough to lure the traveller to its summit. that mass of gray limestone, which takes such an exquisite flush under the red rays of the evening, is not difficult to climb. the zigzag path which mounts its sides is plainly visible from the town, and though steep at first, it grows gradually easier of ascent on the upper slopes of the mountain. pellegrino was originally an island, and is still separated by the plain of the conca d'oro from the other mountains near the coast. down to a few centuries ago it was clothed with underwood, and in much earlier times it grew corn for the soldiers of hamilcar barca, who occupied it in the first punic war. under an overhanging rock on its summit is the grotto of sta. rosalia, the patron saint of the city, the maiden whom tradition records to have made this her pious retreat several centuries ago, and the discovery of whose remains in 1664 had the effect of instantaneously staying the ravages of the plague by which palermo was just then being desolated. the grotto has since been converted, as under the circumstances was only fitting, into a church, to which many pilgrimages are undertaken by the devout. a steep path beyond the chapel leads to the survey station on the mountain top, from which a far-stretching view is commanded. the cone of etna, over eighty miles off as the crow flies, can be seen from here, and still farther to the north, among the liparæan group, the everlasting furnaces of stromboli and vulcano. there is a steeper descent of the mountain towards the southwest, and either by this or by retracing our original route we regain the road, which skirts the base of the mountain on the west, and, at four miles' distance from the gate of the town, conducts to one of the most charmingly situated retreats that monarch ever constructed for himself, the royal villa-chateau of la favorita, erected by ferdinand iv. (ferdinand i. of the two sicilies), otherwise not the least uncomfortable of the series of uncomfortable princes whom the bourbons gave to the south italian peoples. great as are the attractions of palermo, they will hardly avail to detain the visitor during the rest of his stay in sicily. for him who wishes to see trinacria thoroughly, and who has already made the acquaintance of messina and syracuse, of catania and girgenti, the capital forms the most convenient of head-quarters from which to visit whatever places of interest remain to be seen in the western and southwestern corner of the island. for it is hence that, in the natural order of things, he would start for marsala (famous as the landing-place of "the thousand," under garibaldi, in 1860, and the commencement of that memorable march which ended in a few weeks in the overthrow of the bourbon rule) and trapani (from _drepanon_), another sickle-shaped town, dear to the virgilian student as the site of the games instituted by æneas to the memory of the aged anchises, who died at eryx, a poetically appropriate spot for a lover of aphrodite to end his days in. the town of the goddess on the top of monte san giuliano, the ancient eryx, is fast sinking to decay. degenerate descendants, or successors would perhaps be more correct, of her ancient worshippers prefer the plain at its foot, and year by year migrations take place thither which threaten to number this immemorial settlement of pagan antiquity among the dead cities of the past, and to leave its grass-grown streets and moldering cathedral alone with the sea and sky. there are no remains of the world-famed shrine of venus erycina now save a few traces of its foundation and an ancient reservoir, once a fountain dedicated to the goddess. one need not linger on san giuliano longer than is needful to survey the mighty maritime panorama which surrounds the spectator, and to note cape bon in africa rising faintly out of the southward haze. for selinunto has to be seen, and segesta, famous both for the grandeur and interest of their greek remains. from castelvetrano station, on the return route, it is but a short eight miles to the ruins of selinus, the westernmost of the hellenic settlements of sicily, a city with a history of little more than two centuries of active life, and of upwards of two thousand years of desolation. pammilus of megara founded it, so says legend, in the seventh century b. c. in the fifth century of that era the carthaginians destroyed it. ever since that day it has remained deserted except as a hiding-place for the early christians in the days of their persecution, and as a stronghold of the mohammedans in their resistance to king roger. yet in its short life of some two hundred and twenty years it became, for some unknown reason of popular sanctity, the site of no fewer than seven temples, four of them among the largest ever known to have existed. most of them survive, it is true, only in the condition of prostrate fragments, for it is supposed that earthquake and not time has been their worst foe, and the largest of them, dedicated to hercules, or as some hold, to appollo, was undoubtedly never finished at all. its length, including steps, reaches the extraordinary figure of three hundred and seventy-one feet; its width, including steps, is a hundred and seventy-seven feet; while its columns would have soared when completed to the stupendous height of fifty-three feet. it dates from the fifth century b. c., and it was probably the appearance of the swarthy carthaginian invaders which interrupted the masons at their work. it now lies a colossal heap of mighty, prostrate, broken columns, their flutings worn nearly smooth by time and weather, and of plinths shaped and rounded by the same agencies into the similitude of gigantic mountain boulders. it is, however, the temples of selinunto rather than their surroundings which command admiration and in this respect they stand in marked contrast to that site of a single unnamed ruin, which is, perhaps, taking site and ruin together, the most "pathetic" piece of the picturesque in all sicily, the hill and temple of segesta. from calatafimi, scene of one of the garibaldian battles, to segesta the way lies along the castellamare road, and through a beautiful and well-watered valley. the site of the town itself is the first to be reached. monte barbaro, with the ruins of the theater, lies to the north, to the west the hill whereon stands the famous temple. no one needs a knowledge of greek archæology or greek history, or even a special love for greek art, in order to be deeply moved by the spectacle which the spot presents. he needs no more than the capacity of virgil's hero to be touched by "the sense of tears in mortal things." the temple itself is perfect, except that its columns are still unfluted; but it is not the simple and majestic outline of the building, its lines of lessening columns, or its massive architraves upborne upon those mighty shafts, which most impress us, but the harmony between this great work of man and its natural surroundings. in this mountain solitude, and before this deserted shrine of an extinct worship we are in presence of the union of two desolations, and one had well-nigh said of two eternities, the everlasting hills and the imperishable yearnings of the human heart. no words can do justice to the lonely grandeur of the temple of segesta. it is unlike any other in sicily in this matter of unique position. it has no rival temple near it, nor are there even the remains of any other building, temple or what not, to challenge comparison, within sight of the spectator. this ruin stands alone in every sense, alone in point of physical isolation, alone in the austere pathos which that position imparts to it. in the museum of palermo, to which city the explorer of these ruined sanctuaries of art and religion may now be supposed to have returned, the interesting metopes of selinus will recall the recollection of that greater museum of ruins which he just visited at selinunto; but the suppressed monastery, which has been now turned into a museo nazionale, has not much else besides its hellenic architectural fragments to detain him. and it may be presumed, perhaps, that the pursuit of antiquities, which may be hunted with so much greater success in other parts of the islands, is not precisely the object which leads most visitors to sicily to prolong their stay in this beautifully seated city. its attraction lies, in effect and almost wholly, in the characteristic noted in the phrase just used. architecturally speaking, palermo is naught: it is branded, as has been already said, with the banality and want of distinction of all modern italian cities of the second class. and, moreover, all that man has ever done for her external adornment she can show you in a few hours; but days and weeks would not more than suffice for the full appreciation of all she owes to nature. antiquities she has none, or next to none, unless, indeed, we are prepared to include relics of the comparatively modern norman domination, which of course abound in her beautiful mosaics, in that category. the silt of successive ages, and the detritus of a life which from the earliest times has been a busy one, have irrecoverably buried almost all vestiges of her classic past. her true, her only, but her all-sufficient attraction is conveyed in her ancient name. she is indeed "panormus"; it is as the "all harbor city" that she fills the eye and mind and lingers in the memory and lives anew in the imagination. when the city itself and its environs as far as monreale and san martino and la zisa have been thoroughly explored; when the imposing porta felice has been duly admired; when the beautiful gardens of la flora, with its wealth of sub-tropical vegetation, has been sufficiently promenaded on; when la cala, a quaint little narrow, shallow harbor, and the busy life on its quays have been adequately studied; then he who loves nature better than the works of man, and prefers the true eternal to the merely figurative "immortal," will confess to himself that palermo has nothing fairer, nothing more captivating, to show than that _chef-d' oeuvre_ which the supreme artificer executed in shaping those noble lines of rock in which pellegrino descends to the city at its foot, and in tracing that curve of coast-line upon which the city has sprung up under the mountain's shadow. the view of this guardian and patron height, this tutelary rock, as one might almost fancy it, of the sicilian capital is from all points and at all hours beautiful. it dominates the city and the sea alike from whatever point one contemplates it, and the bold yet soft beauty of its contours has in every aspect a never-failing charm. the merest lounger, the most frivolous of promenaders in palermo, should congratulate himself on having always before his eyes a mountain, the mere sight of which may be almost described as a "liberal education" in poetry and art. he should haunt the piazza marina, however, not merely at the promenading time of day, but then also, nay, then most of all, when the throng has begun to thin, and, as homer puts it, "all the ways are shadowed," at the hour of sunset. for then the clear mediterranean air is at its clearest, the fringing foam at its whitest, the rich, warm background of the conca d'oro at its mellowest, while the bare, volcanic-looking sides of monte pellegrino seem fusing into ruddy molten metal beneath the slanting rays. gradually, as you watch the color die out of it, almost as it dies out of a snow-peak at the fading of the _alpen-gluth_, the shadows begin to creep up the mountain-sides, forerunners of the night which has already fallen upon the streets of the city, and through which its lights are beginning to peer. a little longer, and the body of the mountain will be a dark, vague mass, with only its cone and graceful upper ridges traced faintly against pale depths of sky. thus and at such an hour may one see the city, bay, and mountain at what may be called their æsthetic or artistic best. but they charm, and with a magic of almost equal potency, at all hours. the fascination remains unabated to the end, and never, perhaps, is it more keenly felt by the traveller than when palermo is smiling her god-speed upon the parting guest, and from the deck of the steamer which is to bear him away he waves his last farewell to the receding city lying couched, the loveliest of ocean's nereids, in her shell of gold. if his hour of departure be in the evening, when the rays of the westering sun strike athwart the base of pellegrino, and tip with fire the summits of the low-lying houses of the seaport, and stream over and past them upon the glowing waters of the harbor the sight is one which will not be soon forgotten. dimmer and dimmer grows the beautiful city with the increasing distance and the gathering twilight. the warm rose-tints of the noble mountain cool down into purple, and darken at last into a heavy mass of somber shadows; the sea changes to that spectral silver which overspreads it in the gloaming. it is a race between the flying steamer and the falling night to hide the swiftly fading coast-line altogether from the view; and so close is the contest that up to the last it leaves us doubtful whether it be darkness or distance that has taken it from us. but in a few more minutes, be it from one cause or from the other, the effacement is complete. behind us, where palermo lay a while ago, there looms only a bank of ever-darkening haze, and before the bows of our vessel the gray expanse of mediterranean waters which lie between us and the bay of naples. xiv naples the bay of naples--vesuvius--characteristic scenes of street life--the _alfresco_ restaurants--chapel of st. januarius--virgil's tomb--capri, the mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque--the emperor tiberius--description of the blue grotto--the coast-road from castellamare to sorrento--amalfi--sorrento, "the village of flowers and the flower of villages"--the temples of pæstum. naples in itself, apart from its surroundings, is not of surpassing beauty. its claim to be "the most beautiful city in europe" rests solely on the adventitious aid of situation. when the fictitious charm which distance gives is lost by a near approach, it will be seen that the city which has inspired the poets of all ages is little more than a huge, bustling, commonplace commercial port, not to be compared for a moment, æsthetically speaking, with genoa, florence, venice, or many other italian towns equally well known to the traveller. this inherent lack is, however, more than compensated for by the unrivaled natural beauties of its position, and of its charming environs. no town in europe, not palermo with its "golden shell," constantinople with its "golden horn," nor genoa, the "gem of the riviera," can boast of so magnificent a situation. the traveller who approaches naples by sea may well be excused for any exuberance of language. as the ship enters the gulf, passing between the beautiful isles of ischia and capri, which seem placed like twin outposts to guard the entrance of this watery paradise, the scene is one which will not soon fade from the memory. all around stretches the bay in its azure immensity, its sweeping curves bounded on the right by the rocky sorrentine promontory, with sorrento, meta, and a cluster of little fishing villages nestling in the olive-clad precipices, half hidden by orange groves and vineyards, and the majestic form of monte angelo towering above. farther along the coast, vesuvius, the tutelary genius of the scene, arrests the eye, its vine-clad lower slopes presenting a startling contrast to the dark cone of the volcano belching out fire and smoke, a terrible earnest of the hidden powers within. on the left the graceful undulations of the camaldoli hills descend to the beautifully indented bay of pozzuoli, which looks like a miniature replica of the parent gulf with the volcano of monte nuovo for its vesuvius. then straight before the spectator lies a white mass like a marble quarry; this, with a white projecting line losing itself in the graceful curve of vesuvius, resolves itself, as the steamer draws nearer, into naples and its suburbs of portici and torre del greco. beyond, in the far background, the view is shut in by a phantom range of snowy peaks, an offshoot of the abruzzi mountains, faintly discerned in the purple haze of the horizon. all these varied prospects unite to form a panorama which, for beauty and extent, is hardly to be matched in europe. this bald and inadequate description may perhaps serve to explain one reason for the pre-eminence among the many beautiful views in the south of europe popularly allowed to the bay of naples. one must attribute the æsthetic attraction of the bay a good deal to the variety of beautiful and striking objects comprised in the view. here we have not merely a magnificent bay with noble, sweeping curves (the deeply indented coasts of the mediterranean boast many more extensive), but in addition we have in this comparatively circumscribed area an unequaled combination of sea, mountain, and island scenery. in short, the gulf of naples, with its islands, capes, bays, straits, and peninsulas, is an epitome of the principal physical features of the globe, and might well serve as an object lesson for a child making its first essay at geography. then, too, human interest is not lacking. the mighty city of naples, like a huge octopus, stretches out its feelers right and left, forming the straggling towns and villages which lie along the eastern and western shores of the bay. a more plausible, if prosaic, reason for the popularity of the bay of naples may, however, be found in its familiarity. naples and vesuvius are as well known to us in prints, photographs, or engravings as st. paul's cathedral or the houses of parliament. if other famous bays, palermo or corinth, for instance, were equally well known, that of naples would have many rivals in popular estimation. the traveller feels landing a terrible anticlimax. the noble prospect of the city and the bay has raised his expectations to the highest pitch, and the disenchantment is all the greater. the sordid surroundings of the port, the worst quarter of the city, the squalor and filth of the streets, preceded by the inevitable warfare with the rapacious rabble of yelling boatmen, porters, and cab-drivers, make the disillusionized visitor inclined to place a sinister interpretation on the equivocal maxim, _vedi napoli e poi mori_; and goethe's aphorism, that a man can never be utterly miserable who retains the recollection of naples, seems to him the hollowest mockery and the cruellest irony. the streets of naples are singularly lacking in architectural interest. not only are there few historic buildings or monuments, which is curious when we consider the important part naples played in the mediæval history of the south of europe, but there are not many handsome modern houses or palaces of any pretensions. not that naples is wanting in interest. the conventional sight-seer, who calls a place interesting in proportion to the number of pages devoted to its principal attractions in the guide-books, may, perhaps, contemptuously dismiss this great city as a place which can be sufficiently well "done" in a couple of days; but to the student of human nature naples offers a splendid field in its varied and characteristic scenes of street life. to those who look below the surface, this vast hive of humanity, in which italian life can be studied in all its varied phases and aspects, cannot be wholly commonplace. it is a truism that the life of naples must be seen in the streets. the street is the neapolitan's bedroom, dining-room, dressing-room, club, and recreation ground. the custom of making the streets the home is not confined to the men. the fair sex are fond of performing _al fresco_ toilettes, and may frequently be seen mutually assisting each other in the dressing of their magnificent hair in full view of the passers-by. as in oriental cities, certain trades are usually confined to certain streets or alleys in the poorer quarters of the town. the names at street corners show that this custom is a long-established one. there are streets solely for cutlers, working jewelers, second-hand bookstalls, and old clothes shops, to name a few of the staple trades. the most curious of these trading-streets is one not far from the cathedral, confined to the sale of religious wares; shrines, tawdry images, cheap crucifixes, crosses, and rosaries make up the contents of these ecclesiastical marine stores. this distinctive local character of the various arts and crafts is now best exemplified in the piazza degli orefici. this square and the adjoining streets are confined to silversmiths and jewelers, and here the characteristic ornaments of the south italian peasant women can still be bought, though they are beginning to be replaced by the cheap, machine-made abominations of birmingham. apart from the thronging crowds surging up and down, these narrow streets and alleys are full of dramatic interest. the curious characteristic habits and customs of the people may best be studied in the poor quarters round the cathedral. he who would watch this shifting and ever-changing human kaleidoscope must not, however, expect to do it while strolling leisurely along. this would be as futile as attempting to stem the ebb and flow of the street currents, for the streets are narrow and the traffic abundant. a doorway will be found a convenient harbor of refuge from the long strings of heavily laden mules and donkeys which largely replace vehicular traffic. a common and highly picturesque object is the huge charcoal-burner's wagon, drawn usually by three horses abreast. the richly decorated pad of the harness is very noticeable, with its brilliant array of gaudy brass flags and the shining _repoussé_ plates, with figures of the madonna and the saints, which, together with the pagan symbols of horns and crescents, are supposed to protect the horses from harm. unfortunately these talismans do not seem able to protect them from the brutality of their masters. the neapolitan's cruelty to animals is proverbial. this characteristic is especially noticeable on festas and sundays. a neapolitan driver apparently considers the seating capacity of a vehicle and the carrying power of a horse to be limited only by the number of passengers who can contrive to hang on, and with anything less than a dozen perched on the body of the cart, two or three in the net, and a couple on the shafts, he will think himself weakly indulgent to his steed. it is on the castellamare road on a festa that the visitor will best realize the astonishing elasticity of a neapolitan's notions as to the powers of a beast of burden. a small pony will often be seen doing its best to drag uphill a load of twelve or fifteen hulking adults, incited to its utmost efforts by physical suasion in the form of sticks and whips, and moral suasion in the shape of shrill yells and oaths. their diabolical din seems to give some color to the saying that "naples is a paradise inhabited by devils." the _al fresco_ restaurants of the streets are curious and instructive. that huge jar of oil simmering on a charcoal fire denotes a fried-fish stall, where fish and "oil-cakes" are retailed at one sou a portion. these stalls are much patronized by the very poor, with whom macaroni is an almost unattainable luxury. at street corners a snail-soup stall may often be seen, conspicuous by its polished copper pot. the poor consider snails a great delicacy; and in this they are only following ancient customs, for even in roman times snails were in demand, if we may judge from the number of snail-shells found among the pompeii excavations. a picturesque feature are the herds of goats. these ambulating dairies stream through the town in the early morning. the intelligent beasts know their customers, and each flock has its regular beat, which it takes of its own accord. sometimes the goats are milked in the streets, the pail being let down from the upper floors of the houses by a string, a pristine type of _ascenseur_. generally, though, the animal mounts the stairs to be milked, and descends again in the most matter-of-fact manner. the gaudily painted stalls of the iced-water and lemonade dealers give warmth of color to the streets. there are several grades in the calling of _acquaiolo_ (water-seller). the lowest member of the craft is the peripatetic _acquaiolo_, who goes about furnished simply with a barrel of iced water strapped on his back, and a basket of lemons slung to his waist, and dispenses drinks at two centesimi a tumbler. it was thought that the completion of the serino aqueduct, which provides the whole of naples with excellent water at the numerous public fountains, would do away with the time-honored water-seller; but it seems that the poorer classes cannot do without a flavoring of some sort, and so this humble fraternity continue as a picturesque adjunct of the streets. these are only a few of the more striking objects of interest which the observer will not fail to notice in his walks through the city. but we must leave this fascinating occupation and turn to some of the regulation sights of naples. though, in proportion to its size, naples contains fewer sights and specific objects of interest than any other city in italy, there are still a few public buildings and churches which the tourist should not neglect. there are quite half-a-dozen churches out of the twenty-five or thirty noticed by the guide-books which fully repay the trouble of visiting them. the cathedral is in the old part of the town. its chief interest lies in the gorgeous chapel of st. januarius, the patron saint of naples. in a silver shrine under the richly decorated altar is the famous phial containing the coagulated blood of the saint. this chapel was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in fulfilment of a vow by the grateful populace in honor of the saint who had saved their city "from the fire of vesuvius by the intercession of his precious blood." st. januarius is held in the highest veneration by the lower classes of naples, with whom the liquefaction ceremony, which takes place twice a year, is an article of faith in which they place the most implicit reliance. the history of the holy man is too well known to need repetition here. the numerous miracles attributed to him, and the legends which have grown round his name, would make no inconsiderable addition to the hagiological literature of italy. of the other churches, sta. chiara, s. domenico maggiore, and s. lorenzo are best worth visiting. in building sta. chiara the architect would seem to have aimed at embodying, as far as possible, the idea of the church militant, the exterior resembling a fortress rather than a place of worship. in accordance with the notions of church restoration which prevailed in the last century, giotto's famous frescoes have been covered with a thick coating of whitewash, the sapient official who was responsible for the restoration considering these paintings too dark and gloomy for mural decoration. now the most noteworthy objects in the church are the gothic tombs of the angevin kings. the two churches of s. domenico and s. lorenzo are not far off, and the sightseer in this city of "magnificent distances" is grateful to the providence which has placed the three most interesting churches in naples within a comparatively circumscribed area. s. domenico should be visited next, as it contains some of the best examples of renaissance sculpture in naples as sta. chiara does of gothic art. it was much altered and repaired in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but still remains one of the handsomest of the neapolitan churches. its most important monument is the marble group in relief of the virgin, with ss. matthew and john, by giovanni da nola, which is considered to be the sculptor's best work. the gothic church of s. lorenzo has fortunately escaped in part the disfiguring hands of the seventeenth century restorer. this church is of some literary and historical interest, petrarch having spent several months in the adjoining monastery; and it was here that boccaccio saw the beautiful princess immortalized in his tales by the name of fiammetta. in order to appreciate the true historical and geographical significance of naples, we must remember that the whole of this volcanic district is one great palimpsest, and that it is only with the uppermost and least important inscription that we have hitherto concerned ourselves. to form an adequate idea of this unique country we must set ourselves to decipher the earlier-written inscriptions. for this purpose we must visit the national museum, which contains rich and unique collections of antiquities elsewhere absolutely unrepresented. here will be found the best treasures from the buried towns of cumæ, herculaneum, and pompeii. the history of nearly a thousand years may be read in this vast necropolis of ancient art. to many, however, the living present has a deeper interest than the buried past, and to these the innumerable beautiful excursions round naples will prove more attractive than all the wealth of antiquities in the museum. certainly, from a purely æsthetic standpoint, all the best things in naples are out of it if the bull may be allowed. to reach pozzuoli and the classic district of baiæ and cumæ, we pass along the fine promenade of the villa nazionale, which stretches from the castello dell' ovo (the bastille of naples) to the posilipo promontory, commanding, from end to end, superb unobstructed views of the bay. capri, the central point of the prospect, appears to change its form from day to day, like a fairy island. sometimes, on a cloudless day, the fantastic outlines of the cliffs stand out clearly defined against the blue sea and the still bluer background of the sky; the houses are plainly distinguished, and you can almost fancy that you can descry the groups of idlers leaning over the parapet of the little piazza, so clear is the atmosphere. sometimes the island is bathed in a bluish haze, and by a curious atmospheric effect a novel form of _fata morgana_ is seen, the island, appearing to be lifted out of the water and suspended between sea and sky. the grounds of the villa nazionale are extensive, and laid out with taste, but are disfigured by inferior plaster copies, colossal in size, of famous antique statues. it is strange that naples, while possessing some of the greatest masterpieces of ancient sculptors, should be satisfied with these plastic monstrosities for the adornment of its most fashionable promenade. the most interesting feature of the villa nazionale is the aquarium. it is not merely a show place, but an international biological station, and, in fact, the portion open to the public consists only of the spare tanks of the laboratory. this institution is the most important of its kind in europe, and is supported by the principal european universities, who each pay for so many "tables." [illustration] at the entrance to the tunneled highway known as the grotto di posilipo, which burrows through the promontory that forms the western bulwark of naples, and serves as a barrier to shut out the noise of that overgrown city, is a columbarium known as virgil's tomb. the guide-books, with their superior erudition, speak rather contemptuously of this historic spot as the "so-called tomb of virgil." yet historical evidence seems to point to the truth of the tradition which has assigned this spot as the place where virgil's ashes were once placed. a visit to this tomb is a suitable introduction to the neighborhood of which virgil seems to be the tutelary genius. along the sunny slopes of posilipo the poet doubtless occasionally wended his way to the villa of lucullus, at the extreme end of the peninsula. leaving the gloomy grotto, the short cut to pozzuoli, on our right, we begin to mount the far-famed "corniche" of posilipo, which skirts the cliffs of the promontory. the road at first passes the fashionable mergellina suburb, fringed by an almost uninterrupted series of villa gardens. this is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful drives in the south of europe. every winding discloses views which are at once the despair and the delight of the painter. at every turn we are tempted to stop and feast the eyes on the glorious prospect. perhaps of all the fine views in and around naples, that from the capo di posilipo is the most striking, and dwells longest in the memory. at one's feet lies naples, its whitewashed houses glittering bright in the flood of sunshine. beyond, across the deep blue waters of the gulf, vesuvius, the evil genius of this smiling country, arrests the eye, from whose summit, like a halo, "a wreath of light blue vapor, pure and rare, mounts, scarcely seen against the deep blue sky; * * * * * ... it forms, dissolving there, the dome, as of a palace, hung on high over the mountains." portici, torre del greco, and torre del' annunziata can hardly be distinguished in this densely populated fringe of coast-line, which extends from naples to castellamare. sometimes at sunset we have a magnificent effect. this sea-wall of continuous towns and villages lights up under the dying rays of the sun like glowing charcoal. the conflagration appears to spread to naples, and the huge city is "lit up like sodom, as if fired by some superhuman agency." this atmospheric phenomenon may remind the imaginative spectator of the dread possibilities afforded by the proximity of the ever-threatening volcano towering _in terrorem_ over the thickly populated plain. there is a certain weird charm born of impending danger, which gives the whole district a pre-eminence in the world of imagination. it has passed through its baptism of fire; and who knows how soon "the dim things below" may be preparing a similar fate for a city so rashly situated? these dismal reflections are, however, out of place on the peaceful slopes of posilipo, whose very name denotes freedom from care. the shores of this promontory are thickly strewed with roman ruins, which are seldom explored owing to their comparative inaccessibility. most of the remains, theaters, temples, baths, porticoes, and other buildings, whose use or nature defies the learning of the antiquary, are thought to be connected with the extensive villa of the notorious epicure vedius polio. traces of the fish-tanks for the eels, which seneca tells us were fed with the flesh of disobedient slaves, are still visible. descending the winding gradients of posilipo, we get the first glimpse of the lovely little bay of pozzuoli. the view is curious and striking. so deeply and sharply indented is the coast, and so narrow and tortuous are the channels that separate the islands ischia, procida, and nisida, that it is difficult to distinguish the mainland. we enjoy a unique panorama of land and sea, islands, bays, straits, capes, and peninsulas all inextricably intermingled. continuing our journey past the picturesque town of pozzuoli, its semi-oriental looking houses clustered together on a rocky headland, like monaco, we reach the hallowed ground of the classical student. no one who has read his virgil or his horace at school can help being struck by the constant succession of once familiar names scattered so thickly among the dry bones of the guide-books. the district between cumæ and pozzuoli is the _sanctum sanctorum_ of classical italy, and "there is scarcely a spot which is not identified with the poetical mythology of greece, or associated with some name familiar in the history of rome." leaving pozzuoli, we skirt the phlegræan fields, which, owing to their malaria-haunted situation, still retain something of their ancient sinister character. this tract is, however, now being drained and cultivated a good deal. that huge mound on our right, looking like a celtic sepulchral barrow, is monte nuovo, a volcano, as its name denotes, of recent origin. geologically speaking, it is a thing of yesterday, being thrown up in the great earthquake of september 30th, 1538, when, as alexandre dumas graphically puts it, "one morning pozzuoli woke up, looked around, and could not recognize its position; where had been the night before a lake was now a mountain." the lake referred to is avernus, a name familiar to all through the venerable and invariably misquoted classical tag, _facilis descensus averni_, etc. this insignificant-looking volcanic molehill is the key to the physical geography of the whole district. though the upheaval of monte nuovo has altered the configuration of the country round, the depopulation of this deserted but fertile country is due, not to the crater, but to the malaria, the scourge of the coast. the scarcity of houses on the western horn of the bay of naples is very marked, especially when contrasted with the densely populated sea-board on the castellamare side. leaving monte nuovo we come to a still more fertile tract of country, and the luxuriant vegetation of these avernine hills "radiant with vines" contrasts pleasingly with the gloomy land "where the dusky nation of cimmeria dwells" of the poet. the mythological traditions of the beautiful plain a few miles farther on, covered with vineyards and olive-groves and bright with waving corn-fields, where virgil has placed the elysian fields, seem far more appropriate to the landscape as we see it. perhaps a sense of the dramatic contrast was present in the poet's mind when he placed the paradiso and the inferno of the ancients so near together. quite apart from the charm with which ancient fable and poetry have invested this district, the astonishing profusion of ruins makes it especially interesting to the antiquary. a single morning's walk in the environs of baiæ or cumæ will reveal countless fragmentary monuments of antiquities quite outside of the stock ruins of the guide-books, which the utilitarian instincts of the country people only partially conceal, roman tombs serving as granaries or receptacles for garden produce, temples affording stable-room for goats and donkeys, amphitheaters half-concealed by olive-orchards or orange-groves, walls of ancient villas utilized in building up the terraced vineyards; and, in short, the trained eye of an antiquary would, in a day's walk, detect a sufficient quantity of antique material almost to reconstruct another pompeii. but though every acre of this antiquary's paradise teems with relics of the past, and though every bay and headland is crowded with memories of the greatest names in roman history, we must not linger in this supremely interesting district, but must get on to the other beautiful features of the gulf of naples. capri, as viewed from naples, is the most attractive and striking feature in the bay. there is a kind of fascination about this rocky island-garden which is felt equally by the callow tourist making his first visit to italy, and by the seasoned traveller who knew capri when it was the center of an art colony as well known as is that of newlyn at the present day. no doubt capri is now considered by super-sensitive people to be as hopelessly vulgarized and hackneyed as the isle of man or the channel isles, now that it has become the favorite picknicking ground of shoals of neapolitan excursionists; but that is the fate of most of the beautiful scenery in the south of europe, if at all easy of access. these fastidious minds may, however, find consolation in the thought that to the noisy excursionists, daily carried to and from naples by puffing little cockle-shell steamers, the greater part of the island will always remain an undiscovered country. they may swarm up the famous steps of anacapri, and even penetrate into the blue grotto, but they do not, as a rule, carry the spirit of geographical research farther. the slight annoyance caused by the great crowds is amply compensated for by the beauties of the extraordinarily grand scenery which is to be found within the island desecrated by memories of that "deified beast tiberius," as dickens calls him. what constitutes the chief charm of the natural features of capri are the sharp contrasts and the astonishing variety in the scenery. rugged precipices, in height exceeding the cliffs of tintagel, and in beauty and boldness of outline surpassing the crags of the grandest norwegian fiords, wall in a green and fertile garden-land covered with orange-orchards, olive-groves, and corn-fields. cruising round this rock-bound and apparently inaccessible island, it seems a natural impregnable fortress, a sea-girt gibraltar guarding the entrance of the gulf, girdled round with precipitous crags rising a thousand feet sheer out of the sea, the cliff outline broken by steep ravines and rocky headlands, with outworks of crags, reefs, and titanic masses of tumbled rocks. these physical contrasts are strikingly paralleled in the history of the island. this little speck on the earth's surface, now given up solely to fishing, pastoral pursuits, and the exploitation of tourists, and as little affected by public affairs as if it were in the midst of the mediterranean, instead of being almost within cannon-shot of the metropolis of south italy, has passed through many vicissitudes, conquered in turn by phoenicians, greeks, and romans; under rome little known and used merely as a lighthouse station for the benefit of the corn-galleys plying from sicily to naples, till the old emperor augustus took a fancy to it, and used it as a sanatorium for his declining years. some years later we find this isolated rock in the occupation of the infamous tiberius, as the seat of government from which he ruled the destinies of the whole empire. then, to run rapidly through succeeding centuries, we find capri, after the fall of rome, sharing in the fortunes and misfortunes of naples, and losing all historic individuality till the beginning of the present century, when the neapolitan gibraltar became a political shuttlecock, tossed about in turn between naples, england, and france; and now it complacently accepts the destiny nature evidently marked out for it, and has become the sanatorium of naples, and the mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque. one cannot be many hours in capri without being reminded of its tutelary genius tiberius. in fact as mr. a. j. symonds has forcibly expressed it, "the hoof-print of illustrious crime is stamped upon the island." all the _religio loci_, if such a phrase is permissible in connection with tiberius, seems centered in this unsavoury personality. we cannot get away from him. his palaces and villas seem to occupy every prominent point in the island. even the treasure-trove of the antiquary bears undying witness to his vices, and shows that suetonius, in spite of recent attempts to whitewash the emperor's memory, did not trust to mere legends and fables for his biography. even the most ardent students of roman history would surely be glad to be rid of this forbidding spectre that forces itself so persistently on their attention. to judge by the way in which the simple capriotes seek to perpetuate the name of their illustrious patron, one might almost suppose that the emperor, whose name is proverbial as a personification of crime and vice, had gone through some process akin to canonization. capri, though still famous for beautiful women, whose classic features, statuesque forms, and graceful carriage, recall the helens and the aphrodites of the capitol and vatican, and seem to invite transfer to the painter's canvas, can no longer be called the "artist's paradise." the pristine simplicity of these grecian-featured daughters of the island, which made them invaluable as models, is now to a great extent lost. the march of civilization has imbued them with the commercial instinct, and they now fully appreciate their artistic value. no casual haphazard sketches of a picturesque group of peasant girls, pleased to be of service to a stranger, no impromptu portraiture of a little capriote fisher-boy, is now possible. it has become a "sitting" for a consideration, just as if it took place in an ordinary paris atelier or a rome studio. the idea that the tourist is a gift of providence, sent for their especial benefit, to be looked at in the same light as are the "kindly fruits of the earth," recalls to our mind the quaint old indian myth of mondamin, the beautiful stranger, with his garments green and yellow, from whose dead body sprang up the small green feathers, afterwards to be known as maize. however, the capriotes turn their visitors to better account than that; in fact, their eminently practical notions on the point appear to gain ground in this once unsophisticated country, while the recognized methods of agriculture remain almost stationary. the appearance of a visitor armed with sketch-book or camera is now the signal for every male and female capriote within range to pose in forced and would-be graceful attitudes, or to arrange themselves in unnatural conventional groups: aged crones sprout up, as if by magic, on every doorstep; male loungers "lean airily on posts"; while at all points of the compass bashful maidens hover around, each balancing on her head the indispensable water-jar. these vulgarizing tendencies explain why it is that painters are now beginning to desert capri. but we are forgetting the great boast of capri, the blue grotto. everyone has heard of this famous cave, the beauties of which have been described by mr. a. j. symonds in the following graphic and glowing picture in prose: entering the crevice-like portal, "you find yourself transported to a world of wavering, subaqueous sheen. the grotto is domed in many chambers; and the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, silvery, with black-finned fishes diapered upon the blue-white sand. the flesh of a diver in this water showed like the face of children playing at snap-dragon; all around him the spray leaped up with living fire; and when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phosphorescent sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the blades in blue pearls." it must, however, be remembered that these marvels can only be perfectly seen on a clear and sunny day, and when, too, the sun is high in the sky. given these favorable conditions, the least impressionable must feel the magic of the scene, and enjoy the shifting brilliancy of light and color. the spectators seem bathed in liquid sapphire, and the sensation of being enclosed in a gem is strange indeed. but we certainly shall not experience any such sensation if we explore this lovely grotto in the company of the noisy and excited tourists who daily arrive in shoals by the naples steamer. to appreciate its beauties the cave must be visited alone and at leisure. those who complain of the village of capri being so sadly modernized and tourist-ridden will find at anacapri some of that arcadian simplicity they are seeking, for the destroying (æsthetically speaking) fingers of progress and civilization have hardly touched this secluded mountain village, though scarcely an hour's walk from the "capital" of the island. we will, of course, take the famous steps, and ignore the excellently engineered high-road that winds round the cliffs, green with arbutus and myrtle, in serpentine gradients, looking from the heights above mere loops of white ribbon. anacapri is delightfully situated in a richly cultivated table-land, at the foot of monte solaro. climbing the slopes of the mountain, we soon reach the hermitage, where we have a fine bird's-eye view of the island, with anacapri spread out at our feet, and the town of capri clinging to the hillsides on our right. but a far grander view rewards our final climb to the summit. we can see clearly outlined every beautiful feature of the bay of naples, with its magnificent coast-line from misenum to sorrento in prominent relief almost at our feet, and raising our eyes landwards we can see the campanian plain till it is merged in the purple haze of the apennines. to the south the broad expanse of water stretches away to the far horizon, and to the right this incomparable prospect is bounded by that "enchanted land" where "sweeps the blue salernian bay, with its sickle of white sand." and on a very clear day we can faintly discern a purple, jagged outline, which shows where "pæstum and its ruins lie." in spite of the undeniable beauties of capri, it seems so given up to artists and amateur photographers that it is a relief to get away to a district not quite so well known. we have left to the last, as a fitting climax, the most beautiful bit of country, not only in the neighborhood of naples, but in the whole of south italy. the coast-road from castellamare to sorrento, positano, and amalfi offers a delightful alternation and combination of the softest idyllic scenery with the wildest and most magnificent mountain and crag landscape. in fact, it is necessary to exercise some self-restraint in language and to curb a temptation to rhapsodize when describing this beautiful region. the drive from naples to castellamare is almost one continuous suburb, and the change from this monotonous succession of streets of commonplace houses to the beautiful country we reach soon after leaving the volcanic district at castellamare is very marked. in the course of our journey we cannot help noticing the bright yellow patches of color on the beach and the flat house-tops. this is the wheat used for the manufacture of macaroni, of which torre dell' annunziata is the great center. all along the road the houses, too, have their loggias and balconies festooned with the strips of finished macaroni spread out to dry. all this lights up the dismal prospect of apparently never-ending buildings, and gives a literally local color to the district. there is not much to delay the traveller in castellamare, and soon after leaving the overcrowded and rather evil-smelling town we enter upon the beautiful coast-road to sorrento. for the first few miles the road runs near the shore, sometimes almost overhanging the sea. we soon get a view of vico, picturesquely situated on a rocky eminence. the scenery gets bolder as we climb the punta di scutola. from this promontory we get the first glimpse of the beautiful piano di sorrento. it looks like one vast garden, so thickly is it covered with vineyards, olive groves, and orange and lemon orchards, with an occasional aloe and palm tree to give an oriental touch to the landscape. the bird's-eye view from the promontory gives the spectator a general impression of a carpet, in which the prevailing tones of color are the richest greens and gold. descending to this fertile plateau, we find a delightful blending of the sterner elements of the picturesque with the pastoral and idyllic. the plain is intersected with romantic, craggy ravines and precipitous, tortuous gorges, resembling the ancient stone quarries of syracuse, their rugged sides covered with olives, wild vines, aloes, and indian figs. the road to amalfi here leaves the sea and is carried through the heart of this rich and fertile region, and about three miles from sorrento it begins to climb the little mountain range which separates the sorrento plain from the bay of salerno. we can hardly, however, leave the level little town, consecrated to memories of tasso, unvisited. its flowers and its gardens, next to its picturesque situation, constitute the great charm of sorrento. it seems a kind of garden-picture, its peaceful and smiling aspect contrasting strangely with its bold and stern situation. cut off, a natural fortress, from the rest of the peninsula by precipitous gorges, like constantine in algeria, while its sea-front consists of a precipice descending sheer to the water's edge, no wonder that it invites comparison with such dissimilar towns as grasse, monaco, amalfi and constantine, according to the aspect which first strikes the visitor. after seeing sorrento, with its astonishing wealth of flowers, the garden walls overflowing with cataracts of roses, and the scent of acacias, orange and lemon flowers pervading everything, we begin to think that, in comparing the outlying plain of sorrento to a flower-garden, we have been too precipitate. compared with sorrento itself, the plain is but a great orchard or market-garden. sorrento is the real flower-garden, a miniature florence, "the village of flowers and the flower of villages." we leave sorrento and its gardens and continue our excursion to amalfi and salerno. after reaching the point at the summit of the colline del piano, whence we get our first view of the famous isles of the syrens, looking far more picturesque than inviting, with their sharp, jagged outline, we come in sight of a magnificent stretch of cliff and mountain scenery. the limestone precipices extend uninterruptedly for miles, their outline broken by a series of stupendous pinnacles, turrets, obelisks, and pyramids cutting sharply into the blue sky-line. the scenery, though so wild and bold is not bleak and dismal. the bases of these towering precipices are covered with a wild tangle of myrtle, arbutus, and tamarisk, and wild vines and prickly pears have taken root in the ledges and crevices. the ravines and gorges which relieve the uniformity of this great sea-wall of cliff have their lower slopes covered with terraced and trellised orchards of lemons and oranges, an irregular mass of green and gold. positano, after amalfi, is certainly the most picturesque place on these shores, and, being less known, and consequently not so much reproduced in idealized sketches and "touched up" photographs as amalfi, its first view must come upon the traveller rather as a delightful surprise. its situation is curious. the town is built along each side of a huge ravine, cut off from access landwards by an immense wall of precipices. the houses climb the craggy slopes in an irregular ampitheater, at every variety of elevation and level, and the views from the heights above give a general effect of a cataract of houses having been poured down each side of the gorge. after a few miles of the grandest cliff and mountain scenery we reach the capo di conca, which juts out into the bay, dividing it into two crescents. looking west, we see a broad stretch of mountainous country, where "... a few white villages scattered above, below, some in the clouds, some on the margins of the dark blue sea, and glittering through their lemon groves, announce the region of amalfi." to attempt to describe amalfi seems a hopeless task. the churches, towers, and arcaded houses, scattered about in picturesque confusion on each side of the gigantic gorge which cleaves the precipitous mountain, gay with the rich coloring of italian domestic architecture, make up an indescribably picturesque medley of loggias, arcades, balconies, domes, and cupolas, relieved by flat, whitewashed roofs. the play of color produced by the dazzling glare of the sun and the azure amplitude of sea and sky gives that general effect of light, color, sunshine, and warmth of atmosphere which is so hard to portray, either with the brush or the pen. every nook of this charming little rock-bound eden affords tempting material for the artist, and the whole region is rich in scenes suggestive of poetical ideas. when we look at the isolated position of this once famous city, shut off from the rest of italy by a bulwark of precipices, in places so overhanging the town that they seem to dispute its possession with the tideless sea which washes the walls of the houses, it is not easy to realize that it was recognized in mediæval times as the first naval power in europe, owning factories and trading establishments in all the chief cities of the levant, and producing a code of maritime laws whose leading principles have been incorporated in modern international law. no traces remain of the city's ancient grandeur, and the visitor is tempted to look upon the history of its former greatness as purely legendary. the road to salerno is picturesque, but not so striking as that between positano and amalfi. it is not so daringly engineered, and the scenery is tamer. vietri is the most interesting stopping-place. it is beautifully situated at the entrance to the gorge-like valley which leads to what has been called the "italian switzerland," and is surrounded on all sides by lemon and orange orchards. salerno will not probably detain the visitor long, and, in fact, the town is chiefly known to travellers as the starting-place for the famous ruins of pæstum. these temples, after those of athens, are the best preserved, and certainly the most accessible, of any greek ruins in europe, and are a lasting witness to the splendor of the ancient greek colony of poseidonia (pæstum). "_non cuivis homini contingit adire corinthum_," says the poet, and certainly a visit to these beautiful ruins will make one less regret the inability to visit the athenian parthenon. though the situation of the pæstum temple lacks the picturesque irregularity of the acropolis, and the temple of girgenti in sicily, these ruins will probably impress the imaginative spectator more. their isolated and desolate position in the midst of this wild and abandoned plain, without a vestige of any building near, suggest an almost supernatural origin, and give a weird touch to this scene of lonely and majestic grandeur. there seems a dramatic contrast in bringing to an end at the solemn temples of pæstum our excursion in and around naples. we began with the noise, bustle, and teeming life of a great twentieth-century city, and we have gone back some twenty-five centuries to the long-buried glory of greek civilization. index a aboukir, and nelson's victory, 253-255 about, edmond, on the importance of marseilles, 95 abruzzi mountains, 326 aba-abul-hajez, builder of moorish castle, gibraltar, 15 abyla, phoenician name of ceuta, 26 aci castello, 300 aci reale, 300 acis and galatea, 300 æneas and the games at trapani, 318 africa, "crystal atmosphere" of, 5 agate cape, 57 agay, 148 agnone, 302 alameda gardens, gibraltar, 13 alassio, 159 alban, mont, 143 alcantara, valley of the, 300 alexander the great, founding alexandria, 237 alexandria, 96; appearance from the sea, 235; historical interest, 236; alexander's choice of the site, 237; harbor, 238; main street, 240; grand square, 241; palace of ras-et-teen, 243; view from mount caffarelli and the delta, 244; pompey's pillar, 246; library, 247; the serapeum, cemeteries, mosques, coptic convent, and historic landmarks, 248; defeat of antony, and napoleon, 251; ramleh, 251; temple of arsenoe, 252; aboukir bay and nelson, 253, 254; rosetta, haroun al rashid, and the english expedition of 1807, 256; fertility of the delta, 258; cairo and the rising of the nile, 260; damietta, 261; port said, 261, 262; ruins of pelusium, 263; suez canal and m. de lesseps, 264 algeciras, 4, 23, 24 algeria, 78, 97 algiers, 96, 123; "a pearl set in emeralds," 28; the approach to, and the djurjura, 29; the sahel, atlas, and the ancient and modern towns, 30; cathedral and mosque, 31; tortuous plan of the new town, 33, 34; mustapha supérieur, and english colony, 35, 37; a moorish villa, 38; view from el biar, arab cemetery, and idolatry, 39; superstitions and climate, 41 alhendin, 59 ali, mehemet, 239; his works in alexandria, 241, 242; destroys english troops at rosetta, 257 almeria, 55, 56, 57 alps, the, 131; the julian, 147, 148, 154 alpujarras, the, 44, 55 altinum, 231 amalfi, 345, 347, 349 amru, 236 amsterdam and its canals, 219 anacapri, 344 anchises, 318 andré, st., 139, 143 angelo, michael, and the marble quarries at seravezza, 197 ansedonia, 211 antibes, 96, 147, 151, 152 antipolis, 151 antony, mark, defeated by octavius at mustapha pacha, 251 apes' hill, english designation of ceuta, 26 aquæ sextiæ, or aix, roman colony on the site of marseilles, 109 arabic legend and the moorish castle, gibraltar, 15 aragon, kings of, palace of the, at barcelona, 67, 83 arbiter, petronius, 122 aristophanes, and the sausage-seller, 148 arles, 110 arsenoe, temple of, and the story related by catullus, 252 aryan achæans, 108 aryan and semite struggle against christianity and mohammedanism, 4 athanasius at alexandria, 236 athens, 96 atlantic, ideas of ancient greeks respecting the, 2 atlas, mount, 29 attard, "village of roses," 291 attila, 233 augustine, st., and the angel, 213; at st. honorat, 150 augustus, and turbia, 153 autran, joseph, 122 avenza, 195 avernus, 338 avignon, 96 b bab-el-sok, gate of the market-place at tangier, 6 baiæ, 339 balzac, witty remark on dinners in paris, 89 balzan, 291 barbaroux, 122 barcelona, 21, 95, 123; eulogy of cervantes, the promenades and the people, 61; funerals, and the flower-market, 62; streets, rambla, and cathedral, 65; palais de justice, and parliament house, 66; palace of the kings of aragon, 67; museum, park, and monuments to prim and columbus, 69; bird's-eye view, fort of montjuich, mont tibidaho, 70; cemetery and mode of burial, 71; festival of all saints, 72; catalonia, and the church of santa maria del mar, 74; organ in cathedral, and the suburbs, 77; gracia, 77; sarria, 78; barceloneta, 79; academy of arts, schools, music, the university, and workmen's clubs, 80; archæological society, primary education, and places of amusement, 82; history of, 83; trade, healthful properties, and charitable institutions, 84; churches, convents, electric lighting, population, and protestantism, 86; democracy, and holidays of, 87; mariolatry, 88; caballaro, 89; climate, 90; hotels, 90; good looks of the men and women, the police, 92; progressive tendencies, the post-office and passports, 93 barco, hamilcar, founder of barcelona, 82 barral des baux, 121 barthélemy, 122 baths of barcelona, 90; of cleopatra, 250; of caratraca, 44 bay of biscay, 1 "belgium of the east," the, 251 bellet, le, 139 belzunce, monseigneur, and the plague at marseilles, 113, 114 bentinck, lord w., and his attack on genoa, 166 bérenger, 122 berenice, and the temple of arsenoe, 252 bighi, 288 boabdil, last king of granada, 59 boccaccio, and the church of st. lorenzo, naples, 232 bordighera, 158 boron, mont, 125 bouchard, m., and the egyptian stone at rosetta, 257 britain, and tangier, 4; and the acquisition of gibraltar, 22 browning, robert, and gibraltar, 6 bruèys, admiral, defeated by nelson at aboukir bay, 254 buena vista, gibraltar, 14, 23 bull-fights at barcelona, 82, 87; at malaga, 54 burgundians, the, 109 burmola, 289 byng, rear-admiral, and the siege of gibraltar, 22 c cabo de bullones, spanish name of ceuta, 26 cadiz bay, 6 café at gibraltar, 11 cagliari, 96 cairo, 258; rising of the nile, 260 cala dueira, 271 calpe, rock of (gibraltar), 2, 14 camaldoli hills, 326 campyses, at pelusium, 262 canal, grand, at venice, 222-228 cannes, 125, 130; "a babel set in paradise," 150; principal streets, and origin, 151; fortifications of vauban, and roman remains, 152 capraja, 207 capri, 326; changes in appearance, 334; its fascination, 339; historical associations, 340; palaces of tiberias, 341; its beautiful women, 342; blue grotto, 343 carabacel, 127, 138 caratraca, baths of, 44, 50 carinthia, dukes of, 233 carlos, don, and the rising in barcelona, 84 carnival at nice, 133 carqueyranne, 147 carrara, church of st. andrea, and the marble quarries, 196; mosquitos, 197 cartama, 51 carthagenians, and genoa, 162; destruction of selinus, 319 casal curmi, 291 casal nadur, 273 cassian, st., and the monastery of st. victor, marseilles, 116 castellaccio, fort of, 297 castellamare, 345 castiglione della pescaia, 209 castile, 25 castle, moorish, at gibraltar, 15 catacombs at alexandria, 249 catania, 302 cathedral, at gibraltar, 13; at marseilles, 98; at genoa, 80; at barcelona, 65; at nice, 129; at almeria, 57; at algiers, 31; at pisa, 194; st. mark's, venice, 224-226 catullus, and his story relating to the temple of arsenoe, 252 cemetery at alexandria, 248 cervantes, eulogium on barcelona, 61 ceuta, 17; origin of name and history of, 25; main features of, 26; ancient names, and shape of rock, 26 champollion, m., and the egyptian stone at rosetta, 258 charles albert, king of sardinia, and his palace at genoa, 172 "charles iii., king," 21, 22 charles v., 20 château d'if, 105 chiavari, 186 chioggia, 230 cholera, the, at marseilles, 112 cimiez, 127, 138; monastery and amphitheatre of, 139, 142 civita vecchia, its founder and history, 213 cleopatra, and antony, at alexandria, 236; baths of, at alexandria, 250 cleopatra's needle, 246 columbus, monument to, at genoa, 177; monument at barcelona, 69; his reception at barcelona by ferdinand and isabella, 69, 83 cominetto, 270 comino, 268, 272 concha, general, and the sugar-cane industry of malaga, 51 constantinople, 95 contes, 139 convent, coptic, at alexandria, 248 coneto, "lifts to heaven a diadem of towers," 212; churches, etruscan and roman antiquities, and origin, 213 cornigliano, 147 corno, remains of, 212 corradino, 288 cosspicua, 289 cremation suggested for adoption in barcelona, 71 cressy, battle of, 179 cumæ, 333, 339 cyclops, the, and the scogli dei ciclopi, 301 cyrus, 94 d damanhour, 258 damietta, 261 darby, admiral, and the siege of gibraltar, 18 delord, taxile, 122 delta, egyptian, fertility of the, 258 djama-el-kebir, mosque at tangier of the, 6 djurjura, the, 29 don, general, and the alameda gardens, gibraltar, 13 doria, andrea, and his influence in genoa, 164, 173; incidents in his life, 176 drinkwater, captain john, and the siege of gibraltar, 18 dumas, alexandre, allusion to pozzuoli, 338 d'urfé, 122 e "eagle-catchers," the (87th regiment), 4 edward, son of king john of portugal, and his expedition against tangier, 25 egypt, variety of interest connected with, 238; inscribed stone at rosetta, 257; agricultural wealth of, 258; the "gift of the nile," 259; english expedition of 1807, 256 elba, quarries and mines of, 203; napoleon's confinement, plans for improving the island, and his escape, 203-206 el hacho, signal-tower at gibraltar, 16, 26 elliot, general, monument at gibraltar to, 13; the siege of gibraltar, 17, 18 english statuary, defective, 13 eryx, 318 esparto grass, 56 espérandieu, and the church of notre dame de la garde, marseilles, 117 estepona, 23 estérel, the, 148, 150 etna, 295-303 etruscans, the, 211 euganean hills, the, 230 eugénie, empress, spanish origin of, 55 euroklydon, the, at malta, 270 europa point, gibraltar, 13; cottage at, 14, 18 euthymenes, 97; statue at marseilles, 100 f falicon, 139, 144 famine at genoa, 165 ferdinand, don, and the portuguese at ceuta, 25 ferdinand and isabella, reception of columbus at barcelona, 69, 83 ferdinand iv., 317 ferrat, cape, 141 fiescho, count, 177 filfla, 271 flower market, at marseilles, 102; at barcelona, 63 follonica, 209 folquet, 121 formica, 209 fortifications of gibraltar, 16; of genoa, 164; of cannes, 152; ventimiglia, 157 fortuny, his paintings at barcelona, 66, 80 fossa claudia, 230 france, and the siege of gibraltar, 16; captures genoa, 164; and barcelona, 84 fraser, general, and the english expedition to egypt of 1807, 256 frejus, gulf of, 147 funeral at venice, a, 229 funerals at barcelona, 75 g galliera, duchess of, and the palazzo rosso, genoa, 172 garibaldi, birthplace of, 126; crossing calabria, 298; landing at marsala, 318 genoa, once a rival of venice, 160; its detractors, 161; the beauty of its women, 162; history, 163, 164; old and new towns, 166; position, and view from the slopes, 166; mediæval churches, narrowness of streets, and the _palazza_, 168; the via nuova, 170; fergusson on the architecture of, 171; the palazzo ducale, and the statue of hercules, 172, 173; incidents in the life of doria, 176; monument to columbus, 177; the "old dogana," 179; the exchange, trade in coral, precious metals, and filigree work, 180; the cathedral, 180; reputed origin of, 182; church of l'annunziata, and the campo santo, 182; the environs, 184; meeting-place of the rivieras, 185; railway to spezzia, and places on the coast, 187 george i., and gibraltar, 22 giardini, 298 gibel mo-osa, moorish name of ceuta, 26 gibraltar, 4; robert browning's reference to, 6; resemblance to a lion, 7; landing at, 8; variety of nationalities at, 10; picturesqueness, 10; population, 11; strict military regulations, and chief objects of interest, 12, 13; moorish castle, 15; fortifications, 16; siege of, 16-19; capitulation to the prince of hesse, 22; the "key of the mediterranean," 21 girgenti, "city of temples," monuments of pagan worship, and pindar's designation, 307; temple of concord, 309; temple of hercules, ravages of earthquakes, and shelley's allusion in "ozymandias," 311, 312 golfe de la napoule, 148 gondolas of venice, 222 gothard, st., 228 gough, colonel, his defeat of marshal victor at tarifa, 4 government house at gibraltar, 23 gozo, 270, 272, 273 granada, 17, 59 greeks, at gibraltar, 10; their trade at marseilles, 106, 109, 110 grimaldi, the, 179 gros, mont, 139 grosseto, 209 grotto, at malta and st. paul, 293; of sta. rosalia, 317; di posilipo, 335; at capri, 343 guelphs, the, and genoa, 163 guzman, alonzo perez de, and his act of defiance at tarifa, 4 gzeier, 271 h hamilcar barca, and pellegrino, 317 hamrun, 291 harbor of marseilles, 106 haroun al rashid, reputed birthplace, 256 hepaticas, valley of, 139 "hercules, pillars of," 1, 2, 5, 17 hercules and temple at girgenti, 311; temple at selinunto, 319 hesse, prince of, and the acquisition of gibraltar, 22 hicks, captain, and the siege of gibraltar, 22 hieroglyphics, egyptian, at rosetta, 257 hiram, and malaga, 46 homeric era, "pillars of hercules" in the, 2 honorat, st., 149 hougoumont, château of, 15 hyères, 96, 146 hypatia at alexandria, 236 i iberian race of genoa, 162 imtarfa, 292 ischia, 326 islands of the blest, 2 israfel, the angel, and a belief of the moslems, 249 ivory on houses in tangier, 5 j jews, at gibraltar, 10 john of portugal, king, takes ceuta from the moors, 25 joseph of arimathea, and the _sacro catino_ at genoa, 181 jumper, captain, and the siege of gibraltar, 20 jupiter, temple of, at ortygia, 304 k keats, grave of, 194 l la haye, farmhouse of, 15 la mortola, point, 157 _laguna morta_, the, at venice, 230 landslip at roquebrune, 156 lane-poole, mr. stanley, and the nile, 259 las palmas, 296 lazarus, legend respecting, at marseilles, 116 leghorn, its dullness, 163; history, and canals, 201; streets, harbor, trade, statue of ferdinand, and burial-place of, smollett, 202 lentini, 302 leo, the constellation, and berenice's locks, 252 lepanto, battle of, 221 lerici, and shelley's last days, 192 lérins, vincent de, at st. honorat, 149 lesseps, m. de, and the suez canal, 264 lia, 291 library, garrison, at gibraltar, 13; at alexandria, 247 lighthouse of ta giurdan, 272 liguria, noted for the cunning of its people, 162 ligurian sea, 146 limpia, harbor and village of, 127 lion of st. mark at venice, 226 lisbon, 21 louis xiv., 97; and the storming of barcelona, 83 luna, remains of, 194 lyons, climate of, 90 m macgregor, mr. john (rob roy), and the ruins of tanis, 263 magnan, the, 139 malaga, 95; rapid development, 43; climate, general appearance, and convenient position for excursions, 44; the alpujarras, 44; phoenician origin, 46; history, 48; water supply, 48; the vineyards, 50; sugar industry, 51; castle, grecian temple, and the alcazaba, 51; attractiveness of the women, 54; harbor, 53; almeria, 55; cape de gatt, 57; the sierra tejada, the sierra nevada, 58; trevelez and alhendin, 59; lanjaron, the muley hacen, and the picacho, 60 malamocco, 230 malta, 267; "england's eye in the mediterranean," 267; formerly a peninsula of africa, and its fertility, 268; gozo, comino, and cominetto, and the _fungus melitensis_, 270; the gozitans, 272 man with the iron mask, 149 maremma, the, 209 marengo, battle of, 165 marfa, 274 marguerite, ste., 145 mariette bey and the ruins of tanis, 263, 264 mark, st., at alexandria, 236; reputed place of burial, 250; lion at venice, 224 marriages of greeks at marseilles, 107 marsala, 318 marseilles; its greek origin, and importance as the capital of the mediterranean, 94; history, 96, 109; appearance from the sea, 97; the old port and the cannebière, 98, 99; the bourse, promenades, and statues of pytheas and euthymenes, 100; flower market and the prado, 102; the corniche road and _bouillabaisse_, 103, 104; public garden, château d'if, and the quays, 105; harbors, greek merchants, and marriage customs, 106-108; greek type in the physique of the people, 109; hotels, cholera, plague, and the _mistral_, 112, 113; palais des arts and the church of st. victor, 115, 116; church of notre dame de la garde, 117; chain of estaques, fortress, and people, 119; birthplace of distinguished men, 121; its proud position, 123 martin, cap, 156 mary, the virgin, image at st. victor's, marseilles, 119 mascaron, 122 massa, quarries and palace at, 197 massena, general, at genoa, 165 mediterranean, the deep interest connected with the cities and ruins on the shores of the, 2; tarifa, 3, 4; tangier, 4-6; gibraltar, 6-18; algeciras, san roque, and estepona, 23; ceuta, 25, 26; marseilles, 94-123; genoa, 160-191; barcelona, 61-93; alexandria, 234-264; nice, 124-144; malta, 267-294; malaga, 42-60; algiers, 28-41; tuscan coast, 192-218; sicily, 295-324; naples, 325-350; venice, 219-233; the riviera, 145-159 megara, bay of, 303 mentone, 103; mountain paths, 125, 131; walks and drives at, 157, 158 menzaleh, lake, 262, 263 mery, 122 messina, route from naples, 295; general appearance, trade, cathedral, university, etc., 297 minden, 19 mirabeau imprisoned at château d'if, 105 misada, 291 _mistral_, the, 112; at nice, 131 mole at gibraltar, 9, 14, 15, 20 monaco, description of, 153, 155 monreale, cathedral and abbey of, 316 monte carlo, 131; its beauty, 155 monte-cristo and château d'if, 105 montpellier, 90 monuments to elliot and wellington at gibraltar, 13 moorish castle at gibraltar, 15 moors in gibraltar, 10; ceuta taken from the, 25; in spain, 47 mosque of the djama-el-kebir at tangier, 6; at algiers, 31 mosques of alexandria, 250 murano, 231 musta, 292 mustapha pacha, 251 n naples, its population and trade, 95; beauty of position, and charming environs, 325; sordid surroundings of the port, 327; streets, trades, and _al fresco_ toilettes, 328; piazza degli orefici, and cruelty to animals, 329, 330; snails, goats, water sellers, and chapel of st. januarius, 330; churches of sta. chiara, s. domenico maggiore, and s. lorenzo, 332; antiquities of national museum, capri, villa nazionale, and grotto di posilipo, 333; "corniche" of posilipo, and roman ruins, 335; pozzuoli, 335; monte nuovo and avernus, 337; environs of baiæ and cumæ, and fascination of capri, 339; the drive to castellamare, 345; sorrento, 346; amalfi, 347; salerno, 349 napoleon, wars of, and tarifa, 4; and genoa, 165, 181; seizure of barcelona, 83; defeat at alexandria, 251, 255; and a project for a suez canal, 264; at malta, 287; confinement at elba, and escape, 203-206; at venice, 222 napoleon iii., acquires nice, 129 negroes at gibraltar, 10 nelson, feasted at the moorish castle, gibraltar, 16; victory at aboukir bay, 253, 254; at capraja, 207 nervi, 186 nevada, sierra, 58, 59 nicæa, 126, 127 nice, 21, 96, 102; the queen of the riviera, 124; mountains, and its detractors, 125; three distinct towns--greek, italian, and french, 126; harbor and village of limpia, and its early history, 127; castle hill, 128; raüba capeu, and the _mistral_, 131; italian division and the promenade du midi, 132; cathedral of st. réparate, the modern town, and the promenade des anglais, 133; beauty of the private gardens, carnival and battle of flowers, 134, 135; the jardin public, quays on the paillon bank and casino, 137; theatre, préfecture, flower market, the ponchettes, the place masséna, the boulevards victor hugo and dubouchage, cimiez and carabacel, 138; suburbs, 139; the road to monte carlo, and monaco, 141; villefranche, and the infinite charms of, 141; heights of mont alban, and the magnan valley, 143; "gloriously beautiful," 144 nicholas alexandrowitch, the czarewitch, death at nice, 138 nile, the, alluvial deposit, 237; battle of the, 253; fertilizing properties, 260 nimes, 110 notabile, antiquity and manufactures, 290; cathedral and churches, 292 nuovo, monte, 337 o "oceanus river," designation of the atlantic in homeric times, 2 octavius, defeat of antony at mustapha pacha, 251 odessa, 123 o'hara's folly, tower at gibraltar, 17 orange, 110 oranges, at spezzia, 189 orbitello, etruscan relics at, 210 ortygia, island of, 303; temple of jupiter, and the latonia, 304; greek theatre, 305 ostia, 216, 217 ostrogoths, the, and marseilles, 109 p pæstum, temples of, 349, 350 paillon, the, 139 paintings in the palais des arts, marseilles, 115 _palazzi_, the, of genoa and venice, 168 palermo, 312; first impressions disappointing, and the imposing aspect of the streets, 312; the palazzo reale, 315; the cappella palatina, church of martorana, and the cathedral, 316; observatory, monreale, 316; museum, and the rocks of pellegrino, etc., 321, 322; the piazza marina, 322; its beauty at sunset, 323 pallanza, 147 pammilus of megara, and the founding of selinus, 319 pastoret, 122 patrick, st., at st. honorat, 150 paul, st., wrecked at gzeier, 271; popularity at malta, 293 peak of teneriffe, and the rock at ceuta, 27 pegli, 186 pellegrino, monte, 316, 317 pellew, admiral, and the destruction of the pirate fleet, 215 pelusium, ruins of, 263 perini del vaga, his frescoes at genoa, 175 petrarch, 333 pharos of tarifa, the, 3 philip v., 22; bombards barcelona, 83 phocæa, 94 phoenicians, their designation of ceuta, 26; at marseilles, 95; and malaga, 46 pianosa, 206; historical associations, 206 pietra santa, 197 pietro negro, 271 "pillars of hercules," 1; in homeric times, 2, 5, 24, 96 pindar and his designation of agrigentum, 308 piombino, 207 pirates of barbary, 97 pisa, rival of genoa, 163; cathedral, campo santo, baptistry, and leaning tower of, 198, 199 plague, the, at marseilles, 112, 113; at palermo, 317 pliny, 247 polyphemus and aci reale, 198 pompey's pillar, 247 pons, st., 139 populonia, 207; defeat of lars porsenna of clusium, and possession by the etruscans, 208 port said, 258; coaling station, 262 porto (tuscany), 216, 217 portugal, king john takes ceuta from the moors, 25 pozzuoli, bay of, 326, 334, 335; town of, 335; allusion of alexandre dumas, 338 prim, monument to, at barcelona, 69 proserpine, temple of, at imtarfa, 292 ptolemy philadelphus and the temple of arsenoe, 252 punta de africa, the, the african pillar of hercules, 24 pyrgos, 214 pytheas, 97; statue at marseilles, 100 q quarry of the cappucini, 305 r rabato, 272 rameses, and pelusium, 263 ramleh, 251 rapallo, bay of, 186 raphael, 175 raphael, st., 146 raymond des tours, 121 recco, 186 revolution, french, and venice, 222 riva, 147 riviera, the, general aspect, 145; origin of name, 146; extent, and climate, 147; the estérel, agay, golfe de la napoule, 148; ste. marguerite, and st. honorat, 149; cannes, 150-154; monaco, 153; monte carlo, 155; mentone, 155, 158; roquebrune, 156, 157; bordighera, and san remo, 158; alassio and savona, 159 riviera di levante, 146, 185 riviera di ponento, 146, 185 rodney, lord, and the siege of gibraltar, 18 roger ii., 314 rogers, samuel, on andrea doria, 173 romans, the, at marseilles, 97, 110; at genoa, 162; at nicæa, 128; at malaga, 46 ronda, mountains of, 17 rooke, sir george, and the siege of gibraltar, 21 roquebrune, 156; quaint story connected with, 156 rose, the chevalier, and the plague of marseilles, 113 roses of the riviera, 145 rosetta, 253; reputed birthplace of haroun al rashid, 256; english expedition of 1807, 256; archælogical discoveries, 258 rosia bay, gibraltar, 14, 20, 23 rostang, 121 rusellæ, 211 ruskin, professor, on st. mark's, venice, 223, 224 s _sacro catino_, the, at genoa, 181 sahel mountains, the, 30 sais, 263 salerno, temples at, 349 salles, de, 121 salmun, 293 salvian, at st. honorat, 150 san remo, 131, 158, 159 san roque, 23 san salvador, 291 santa croce, cape, 303 santa marinella, 214 santa severa, 214 saracens, at marseilles, 109; at genoa, 163; at civita vecchia, 212 sarcophagus of ashmunazar, king of sidon, at girgenti, 308 savona, 159 savoy, counts of, and nice, 129 scoglio marfo, 271 scylla and charybdis, 295 sebta, or septem, derivation of "ceuta," 25 segesta, 319; temples at, 320 selinunto, 319; ancient temples at, 320 senglea, 289 serapeum, the, at alexandria, 248 serapis, temple of, 236 seravezza, marble quarries at, and michael angelo, 197 serpentine at spezzia, 188 shakespeare, allusion to the nile, 260 sheba, queen of, and the _sacro catino_ in the cathedral of genoa, 181 shelley, last days at lerici, and death, 192, 193 shovel, sir cloudesley, and the siege of gibraltar, 21 sicily, appearance from the sea, 295; messina, 296, 297; taormina, 297, 298; etna, and aci reale, 299, 300; ortygia, 303; syracuse, 303; girgenti, 307; palermo, 312-318; san guiliane, 318; selinunto, 318; monte pellegrino, 322 siege of gibraltar, 17-20 sierra of the snows, the, 17 simos and protis, supposed founders of marseilles, 94 smollett, tobias, grave of, 202 snails as an article of diet, 330 soldiers at gibraltar, 11 sorrento, 130, 345; and tasso, 346 sovana, 211 spain, rock of calpe, 2; landing of first berber sheikh, 3; antiquity of the moorish castle, gibraltar, 15; driven from gibraltar, 19; acquires ceuta, 25; and columbus, 178; the most catholic country in the world, 74; great number of holidays, 87; caballero, lady novelist, 88; piquancy of the women, 91; unsettled condition of, 92 spanish, the, at gibraltar, 11 spanish succession, war of the, 22 spezzia, scenery around, 160; arsenal of, 168; exquisite scenery and remarkable situation, 187; oranges at, 189; villages around, 190; harbor and men-of-war, 191; bay of, 192 stanfield's painting of vico, 346 statuary, english, its inferior character, 13 stone, egyptian, with inscription, at rosetta, 257 strabo, 247 stromboli, 317 suez canal, 96, 123; construction by m. de lesseps, a dream realized, 264 syracuse, interest and beauty of, 303 t taggia, 158 talamone, 211 tangier, bay of, 4; distant view and features of the town of, 5; expedition of edward, son of king john of portugal, against, 25 tanis, ruins of (zoan of the old testament), 263 taormina, 297; elevation of, 298; beautiful prospect and ruins of greek theater, 299 tarascon, 96 tarif ibn malek, first berber sheikh who landed in spain, 3 tarifa, the pharos of, 3; the arms, town, and history of, 4 tarquinii, ruins of, 212 tasso and sorrento, 346 tejada, sierra, 58 teneriffe, 296 termini, 312 _terral_, the, of malaga, 43 tête de chien, 153 thackeray and _bouillabaisse_, 104 theodore, st., statue at venice, 226 thiers, m., 122 tiber, the, 215 tintoret, 175 titian, 175 torcello, the ancient altinum, 231 torre dell' annunziata, manufacture of macaroni at, 345 trajan, founder of civita vecchia, 216 tramontana, the, of the riviera, 43 trapani, 318 trevelez, 59 trinacria, 318 turbia, the, 103 turks, at gibraltar, 10 tuscan coast (_see_ lerici, sarzana, carrara, pisa, leghorn, elba, civita vecchia, etc.). u university of barcelona, 80; of velletta, 286; of messina, 297 urban v., pope, and the church of st. victor, marseilles, 116 v valletta, 267; fortress, buildings, population, and abundance of labor, 274, 275; the port, 275; military station, and peculiar construction, 276; strada reale, 278; the people, and public buildings, 280; the knights, and various sieges, 284; military hospital, 286; the university and the prison, 286; visit of bonaparte, and the strada mezzodi, 287; suburbs, 289; notabile and hamrun, 290; popularity of st. paul, 293; cathedrals, 293, 294 vanderdussen, rear-admiral, and the siege of gibraltar, 22 vegetation at marseilles, 104 veii, 212 venice, 95, 122; contrasted with genoa, 160; rival of genoa, 163; the _palazzi_ of, 168; a town unequalled in europe, and general aspect, 219; history, 221; formation and shape, 222; view of san marco from the piazza, 223-226; date of erection, restoration, and interior of st. mark's, 225; view from the molo, and the grand canal, 226, 227; a funeral, 229; islands sheltering it from the sea, 230-232 ventimiglia, fortifications of, 157 venus, temple of, shrine at eryx, 318 venus zephyrites, 252 vesuvius, 161, 326 viareggio, recovery of shelley's body at, 193, 198 vico, 346 victor, marshal, dispersal of his army by colonel gough at tarifa, 4 villa franca, 21; treaty of, 129; picturesqueness of, 141 virgil, reference to the cunning of ligurians, 161; the elysian fields, 338 visigoths, the, 109 vittoriosa, 289 vulcano, 317 w wade, marshal, 13 war of the spanish succession, 22 wauchope, general, at rosetta, 256 wellington, monument at gibraltar to, 13 whittaker, captain, and the siege of gibraltar, 22 women, of genoa, 162; restrictions at the cathedral of genoa against, 181; of spain, 92; of nice, 129; their attractiveness at malaga, 54; of naples, 328; of capri, 342 x xerxes, 94 y young, dr., and the egyptian stone at rosetta, 258 z zerka, 273 footnotes: [1] history of modern architecture. [2] dennis: "cities of etruria." [3] dennis: "cities of etruria," i., p. xxxii. [4] ruskin: "stones of venice." [5] alison's "history of europe." [6] sir theodore martin. [7] in homeric times, as is shown by the odyssey, the nile was called [greek: aignptos], a name which was afterwards transferred to the country. the cruise of the frolic, by w.h.g. kingston. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ the cruise of the frolic, by w.h.g. kingston. preface. by barnaby brine, esq, rn. the "cruise of the `frolic'" has already met with so many marks of favour, that it is hoped it will be welcomed not the less warmly in its new and more attractive form. the yachting world especially received the narrative of my adventures in good part; two or three, however, among whom was the o'wiggins, insisted that i had caricatured them, and talked of demanding satisfaction at the point of the sword, or the muzzle of a pistol. i assured them then, as i do now, that on the word of an officer and a gentleman, i had not the slightest intention of wounding the feelings of any human being; and i entreated their pardon, if in shooting at a venture i had hit an object at which i had not taken aim. i can only say, that i hope my readers may experience as much pleasure in perusing my adventures, as i had in writing them, and, i may add, again feel, in looking over the pages which recall so many of the amusing scenes and incidents of my yachting days--a pleasure which will, i feel sure, be shared by my companions in the adventures i have described. no one with any yachting experience will venture to say that the tale is improbable, although it may be confessed that when an author takes pen in hand, he is apt to throw an air of romance over events which, if told in a matter-of-fact manner, would be received as veracious history; and such is the plea which i have to offer for the truth of the following narrative of my yachting experience many summers ago. chapter one. a yachtsman's lament--the "frolic," and the frolickers. what yachtsman can ever forget the beautiful scene cowes road presented on a regatta morning in the palmy days of the club, when the broad pennant of its noble commodore flew at the masthead of his gallant little ship, the "falcon," and numberless beautiful craft, of all rigs and sizes, with the white ensign of st. george at their peaks, and the red cross and crown in their snowy burgees aloft, willingly followed the orders of their honoured leader? then, from far and near, assembled yachts and pleasure-boats, of all degrees, loaded with eager passengers to witness the regatta; and no puffing, blowing, smoking, rattling steamers came to create discord on the ocean, and to interfere with the time-honoured monopoly of the wind in propelling vessels across the watery plain. small thanks to the man whose impertinently-inquisitive brain could not let the lid of his tea-kettle move up and down at its pleasure without wanting to know the cause of the phenomenon! smaller to him who insisted on boiling salt water on the realms of old neptune! stern enemy to the romance and poetry of a life on the ocean! could you not be content to make carriages go along at the rate of forty miles an hour over the hard land, without sending your noisy, impudent demagogues of machines to plough up the waves of the sea, which have already quite enough to do when their lawful agitator thinks fit to exert his influence? it was a work of no slight difficulty and risk to cruise in and out among the innumerable craft at anchor, and dodging about under sail just when the yachts were preparing to start. i doubt whether many of your "turn-a-head and back her" mariners, with their chimney-sweep faces, would possess seamanship enough to perform the feat without fouling each other every instant. but i must not go on harping on the smoke-jacks. back, memory! back, to those glorious yachting days. of the regatta i am treating. while afloat, all was movement, gaiety, and excitement; there was not less animation on shore. the awning of the club-house shaded crowds of gay visitors; and on the broad esplanade in front of it were drawn up the carriages-and-four of the noble house of holmes, and those of barrington and simeon, with blood-red hands emblazoned on their crests; while, in like style, some might by chance come over from appuldercombe, and others of equal rank from the east and the west end of the island; and thus, what with booths of gingerbread and bands of music, scarcely standing-room was to be found on the quays during the day, while every hotel and lodging was overflowing at night. and then the ball! what lofty rank, what a galaxy of beauty, was to be seen there! and the fireworks! what a splutter, what a galaxy of bright stars they afforded! alas, alas! how have they faded! how have they gone out! the pride of cowes has departed, its monopoly is no more, its regattas and its balls are both equalled, if not surpassed, by its younger rivals! "tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis." i am now about to speak of times when that change had already commenced, and the fleets of the ryde, the thames, the western, the irish, and other clubs dotted the ocean. the first day of a cowes regatta broke fair and lovely, then down came the rain in torrents to disappoint the hopes of the pleasure-seekers, like the clouds which at every turn beset our path in life; but again, as they do happily in our mortal course, the clouds passed away, and the sun shone forth bright, warm, and cheering; a light air sprang up from the westward, and the whole scene on shore and afloat looked animated, joyous, and beautiful. while the rain-drops were still hanging on the trees, a large party of ladies and gentlemen collected on the yacht club slip, by the side of which were two gigs, their fine, manly crews, with their oars in the air, ready to receive them. three or four servants followed, laden with cloaks and plaids, to guard against a repetition of the shower; and several white baskets, of no mean proportions, showed that delicacies were provided from the shore which might not be found afloat. never was a merrier set of people collected together. cheerful voices and shouts of laughter emanated from them on all sides. "who's for the first boat?" sung out ned hearty, the owner of the "frolic." ned had tried shooting, hunting, and every other amusement which the brain of man has invented to kill time; and he was now trying yachting, which he seemed to enjoy amazingly, though practically he knew very little about it; but i never met a man, green from the shore, so 'cute in taking in the details of marine affairs. in a week he could box the compass, knew the names of all the sails and most of the ropes of his craft, and had a slight notion of steering, though i'll wager he never touched a tiller in his life before. "i say, old fellow," he continued, turning to me--i had joined him the day before, and had taken up my quarters on board for a spell--"do you take charge of the first gig, and see some of the ladies safe on board. send her back, though, for the two boats won't hold us all, and the cardiffs and lorimer have not come down yet." "very well: i can stow four ladies and three gentlemen," i answered, stepping into the boat, and offering my hand to miss seaton, who was considered the belle of the party by most of the men: at all events, she was the most sought after, for she was that lovable thing, an heiress. she took her seat, and looked up with her soft blue eyes to see who was next coming. "we'll go in the first! we'll go in the first?" exclaimed the two miss rattlers, in one breath; and forthwith, without ceremony, they jumped into the boat, disdaining my proffered aid. fanny rattler, the eldest, was dark, with fine flashing eyes and a _petite_ figure; but susan was the girl for fun. she had not the slightest pretension to beauty, of which she was well aware; but she did not seem to care a pin about it: and such a tongue for going as she had in her head! and what funny things it said!--the wonder was it had not worn out long ago. "who'll come next?" i asked. "come, miss may sandon, will you?" she nodded, and gave her delicate little hand into my rough paw. she was one of three sisters who were about to embark. they were all fair, and very pretty, with elegant figures, and hair with a slight touch of auburn, and yet they were not, wonderful as it may seem, alike in feature. this made them more attractive, and there was no mistaking one for the other. the three gentlemen who presented themselves were harry loring, a fine, good-looking fellow, a barrister by profession, but briefless, and the younger son of sir john and lady loring. he was a devoted admirer of miss seaton. the next was sir francis futtock, a post-captain, and a right honest old fellow. "here, i must go, to act propriety among you youngsters," he said, as he stepped into the boat. the third, will bubble, the owner of a small yacht called the "froth," laid up that year for want, as he confessed, of quicksilver to float her. will, like many a man of less wisdom, had been, i suspect, indulging in railway speculations, and if he had not actually burnt his fingers, he had found his capital safely locked up in lines which don't pay a dividend. "shove off!" was the word; and i, seizing the yoke-lines, away we went towards the "frolic." "i say, sir francis, take care they behave properly,--don't discredit the craft," sung out her owner. "no flirtations, remember, till we get on board--all start fair." "hear that, young ladies," said sir francis, looking, however, at miss seaton, whereat a _soupcon_ of rosy tint came into her fair cheek, and her bright eyes glanced at her own delicate feet, while henry loring tried to look nohow, and succeeded badly. "i vote for a mutiny against such restrictions," cried miss susan rattler. "i've no idea of such a thing. come, sir francis, let you and me set the example." the gallant officer, who had only seen the fair susan two or three times before, stared a little, and laughingly reminded her that he, as a naval man, should be the last to disobey the orders of the commander-in-chief. "though faith, madam," he added, "the temptation to do so is very great." "there, you've begun already with a compliment, sir francis," answered miss susan, laughing; "i must think of something to say to you in return." she had not time, however, before the whole party were put in terror of their lives by a large schooner-yacht, which, without rhyme or reason, stood towards the mouth of the harbour, merely for the sake of standing out again, and very nearly ran us down, as she went about just at the moment she should not. we did not particularly bless the master, who stood at the helm with white kid gloves on his hands, one of which touched the tiller, the other held a cambric handkerchief to his nose, the scent of which bubble declared he could smell as we passed to leeward. two minutes more took us alongside the "frolic." she was a fine cutter of between ninety and a hundred tons; in every respect what a yacht should be, though not a racer; for ned hearty liked his ease and his fun too much to pull his vessel to pieces at the very time he most wanted to use her. she did not belong to the cowes squadron; but ryde owned her, and ryde was proud of her, and the red burgee of the royal victoria yacht club flew at her masthead. the water was perfectly smooth, so the ladies stepped on board without any difficulty. the gentlemen were busily engaged in arranging the cloaks and cushions for the ladies, while the other boats were coming off. in the next came, under charge of captain carstairs, who was yachting regularly with hearty, mrs sandon, and two more of her fair daughters. mamma was a very amiable gentlewoman, and had been a brunette in her youth, not wanting in prettiness, probably. then came a mrs skyscraper, a widow, pretty, youngish--that is to say, not much beyond thirty--and with a good jointure at her own disposal; and a very tall young lady, miss mary masthead by name, a regular jolly girl, though, who bid fair to rival the rattlers. then there was master henry flareup perched in the bows, a precocious young gentleman, waiting for his commission, and addicted to smoking; not a bad boy in the main, however, and full of good nature. hearty himself came off last with what might be considered the aristocracy of the party--lady and miss cardiff, lord lorimer, and the honourable mrs topgallant; and with them was young sandon, an oxonian, and going into a cavalry regiment. her ladyship was one of those persons who look well and act well, and against whom no one can say a word; while clara cardiff was a general favourite with all sensible men, and even the women liked her; she talked a great deal, but never said a silly thing, and, what is more, never uttered an unkind one. she was so incredulous, too, that she never believed a bit of scandal, and (consequently, or rather, for such would not in all cases be the _sequitur_) at all events she never repeated one. she was not exactly pretty, but she had a pair of eyes, regular sparklers, which committed a great deal of mischief, though she did not intend it; her figure was _petite_ and perfect for her height, and she was full of life and animation. mrs topgallant was proud of her high descent, and a despiser of all those who had wealth, the advantages arising from which they would not allow her to enjoy. it was whispered that her liege lord was hard up in the world--not a very rare circumstance now-a-days. i almost forgot lord lorimer. he was a young man--a very good fellow--slightly afraid of being caught, perhaps, and consequently very likely to be so. the miss sandons, in their quiet way, set their caps at him; jane seaton looked as if she wished he would pay her more attention; and mrs skyscraper thought his title very pretty; but the rattler girls knew that he was a cut above them; and clara cardiff treated him with the same indifference that she did the rest of the men. such was the party assembled on board the "frolic." i have not yet described the "frolic," which, as it turned out, was to be my home--and a very pleasant home, too, for many a month on the ocean wave; and yet she was well worthy of a description. she had the first requisite for a good sea-boat--great breadth of beam, with sharp bows, and a straightish stem. her bulwarks were of a comfortable height, and she was painted black outside; her copper, of its native hue, was varnished so as to shine like a looking-glass. some people would have thought her deck rather too much encumbered with the skylights; but i am fond of air; provided there are ample means of battening them down in case of a heavy sea breaking on board, they are to be commended. a thorough draught can thus always be obtained by having the foremost and aftermost skylights open at the same time; in a warm climate, an absolute necessity. besides her main cabin, she had five good-sized sleeping-cabins, a cabin for the master and chief mate, store-rooms, and pantries; a large fore cuddy for the men; and soyer himself would not have despised the kitchen range. i might expatiate on the rosewood fittings of her cabin, on the purity of her decks, on the whiteness of her canvas and ropes, on the bright polish of the brass belaying-pins, stanchions, davits, and guns, and on the tiller with the head of a sea-fowl exquisitely carved; but, suffice it to say, that, even to the most fastidious taste, she was perfect in all her details. before hearty came down i had engaged a crew for him, and as soon as he arrived on board, i mustered them aft in naval fashion. they were, truly, a fine-looking set of fellows, as they stood hat in hand, dressed in plain blue frocks and trousers, the ordinary costume of yachtsmen, with the name of "frolic" in gold letters on the black ribbon which went round their low-crowned hats. the name of the master was snow. he was a thorough sea-dog, who had spent the best part of his life in smuggling, but not finding it answer of late, had grown virtuous, and given up the trade. he was clean and neat in his person; and as he appeared in his gold-laced cap, and yacht-buttons on his jacket, he looked every inch the officer. odd enough, the name of one of the other men was sleet, so carstairs chose to dub the rest, hail, ice, frost, rain, mist, thaw, and so on; while one of the boys always went by the name of drizzle. hearty had brought down his own man, but was very soon obliged to send him on shore again; for john, though an excellent groom, proved a very bad sailor. among other disqualifications, he was invariably sick, and could never learn to keep his legs. the first day we got under weigh, he caught hold of the swing table, and sent all the plates and dishes flying from it. after breakfast he hove overboard half a dozen silver forks and spoons when shaking the tablecloth; and as he went to windward, of course all the crumbs and egg-tops came flying over the deck. indeed, it were endless to mention all the inexcusable atrocities poor john committed. on his retiring on sick leave, we shipped a sea-steward to serve in his stead, who, having been regularly brought up on board yachts, proved himself admirable in his department; but a more impudent rascal to all strangers whom he thought not likely to know his master, i never met. who can fail to look with pleasure at the mouth of the medina on a fine summer's day, filled as the roadstead is with numerous fine yachts, as well fitted to contend with the waves and tempests in a voyage round the world as the largest ship afloat! the scenery itself is beautiful--a charming combination of wood and water. on one side, to the east, norris castle, with its ivy-crowned turrets and waving forest; on the other, the church-spire peeping amid the trees; and the pretty collection of villas climbing the heights, and extending along the shore from the club-house and castle to egypt point, with the fine wild downs beyond. on the opposite coast, the wooded and fertile shores of hampshire; the lordly tower of eaglehurst, amid its verdant groves; and calshot castle on its sandy beach, at the mouth of the southampton water; while far away to the east are seen, rising from the ocean, the lofty masts and spars of the ships-of-war at spithead, and the buildings in the higher parts of ryde; altogether forming a picture perfect and unrivalled in its kind. osborne--fit abode of her majesty of england-has now sprung up, and added both dignity and beauty to the scene. chapter two. treats of the regatta and dinner on board the "frolic." "what shall we do? which way shall we go?" was the cry from all hands. "accompany the yachts to the eastward, and haul our wind in time to be back before the flood makes," was will bubble's suggestion, and it was approved of and acted on. we watched the yachts starting, and a very pretty sight it was; but i have not the slightest recollection of their names, except that they are mostly those which have sailed before at ryde. it is the _tout ensemble_ of a regatta which makes up the interest; the white sails moving about, the number of craft dressed out with gay colours, the bands of music, the cheers as the winners pass the starting vessel, the eagerness of the men in the boats pulling about with orders, the firing of guns, the crowd on shore, the noise and bustle; and yet no dust, nor heat, nor odours disagreeable as at horse-races, where abominations innumerable take away half the pleasure of the spectacle. a gun was fired for the yachts to take their stations and prepare; a quarter of an hour flew by--another was heard loud booming along the water, and up went the white folds of canvas like magic--mainsail, gaff-topsail, foresail, and jib altogether. a hand ran aloft to make fast the gaff-topsail-sheet the moment the throat was up, and while they were still swaying away on the peak. every man exerts himself to the utmost--what muscular power and activity is displayed! there is not one on board who is not as eager for victory as the owner. what a crowd of canvas each tiny hull supports. what a head to the gaff-topsail, as long as that of the mainsail itself! and then the jib, well may it be called a balloon; it looks as if it could lift the vessel out of the water and carry her bodily along; it can only be set when she is going free; another is stopped along the bowsprit ready to hoist as she hauls close up to beat back. huzza! away glide the beautiful beings--they look as if they had life in them; altogether, not two seconds' difference in setting their sails--a magnificent start! this beats the turf hollow: no slashing and cutting the flanks of the unfortunate horses, no training of the still more miserable jockeys; after all of which, you see a flash of yellow, or green, or blue jackets, and in a few minutes every thing is over, and you hear that some horse has won, and some thousands have slipped out of the hands of one set of fools into those of another set, who, if wiser, are perhaps not more respectable. now, consider what science is required to plan a fast yacht, what knowledge to build her, to cut and fashion her canvas-to rig her. what skill and hardihood in master and crew to sail her. what fine manly qualities are drawn out by the life they lead. again i say, huzza for yachting! away glided the "frolic" from her moorings, as the racing-yachts, accompanied with a crowd of others, ran dead before the wind to the eastward through cowes roads. the whole channel appeared covered with a wide spread of canvas, as we saw them stem on with their mainsails over on one side, and their immense square-sails boomed out on the other. everybody on board was pleased, some uttered loud exclamations of delight, even the miss sandons smiled. they never expressed their pleasure by any more extravagant method; in fact, they were not given to admiration, however willing to receive it. i wish two persons to be noted more particularly than the rest--our hero and heroine, at least for the present; for what is a story, however true, without them? they were to be seen at the after-part of the vessel--the one, the fair jane seaton, sitting on a pile of cushions, and leaning against the side, while harry loring, the other, reclined on a wrap-rascal at her feet, employed in looking up into her bright blue eyes, as she unconsciously pulled to pieces a flower he had taken out of his button-hole and given her. "wouldn't it be delightful to take a cruise to the antipodes?" he asked. "yes," she answered. "just as we are now," he added, "with such a heaven above me." he looked meaningly into her blue eyes. sweet jane blushed, as well she might. what more in the same style he said i don't know, for as she bent her head down, and he put his face into her blue hood, not a word reached me. by the by, all the ladies wore blue silk hoods, formed after the model of the front of a bathing-machine, and they were considered admirable contrivances to help a quiet flirtation, as in the present instance, besides aiding in preserving the complexion. hearty was rather bothered, i fancied. he liked to be making love to somebody, he declared, and jane seaton appeared to be a girl so much to his taste, that, as he confessed, he felt rather spooney on her, and had almost made up his mind to try his luck. foolish jane! here was ten thousand a year ready to throw himself at your feet instead of the penniless youth who had so easily placed himself there. how you would have kicked had you known the truth! "i say, hearty, can't you find something for all these young people to do to keep them out of mischief?" sung out sir francis. "remember the proverb about idleness. i tremble for the consequences." "fie, fie!" said mrs skyscraper. "fie, fie!" echoed mrs topgallant; "i'm ashamed of you." "we'll try what can be done, sir francis," answered hearty. "can you, bubble, devise something?" "i have it," replied will. "tablecloths, napkins, towels, and all sorts of household linen came on board yesterday at portsmouth unhemmed, so i laid in a supply of needles and thread this morning on purpose for the present emergency." the rogue had put sir francis up to making the observation he had done. in a few minutes a number of rolls of various sorts of linen were brought on deck. some of the damsels protested that they had no needles, and couldn't work and wouldn't work, till sir francis slyly suggested that it was a trial to see who would make the most notable wife; and without another objection being offered, all the fair hands were employed in sewing away at a great rate, the gentlemen, meantime, holding their parasols to shade them from the sun. carstairs was the only exception. he slyly went forward, and, taking out pencil and paper, made a capital sketch of the various groups, under which he wrote, "all for love," and headed, "distressed needlewomen;" much to the scandal of those who saw it. the ladies, old and young, soon got tired of doing any thing, and the announcement that dinner would be ready as soon as the company were, was received with evident signs of satisfaction. hearty was a sensible fellow, and determined to get rid of all bad london habits, so we dined early on board; and then when we got back to port in the evening, we used generally to repair to the house of one or other of the guests, and enjoy a meal called by some a glorious tea, by others a yachting tea--in fact, it was something like the supper of our ancestors, with tea and coffee. it mattered, therefore, nothing to us whether we got back at eight, nine, or ten; no one waited dinner for us; indeed, hearty never would undertake to get back in time. i should advise all yachting people to follow the good example thus set them. by general acclamation it was determined that we should dine on deck; and sir francis, bubble, and some of the more nautical gentlemen, set to work to rig tables, which we accomplished in a very satisfactory manner, and never was a better feast set before a more hungry party of ladies and gentlemen. champagne was the favourite beverage; and certainly hearty did not stint his friends in it, though there was no lack of less refined liquors. sir francis, of course, proposed the health of ned hearty; "and may there soon be a mrs hearty to steady the helm of the frolic!" were the last words of his speech. ned got up to return thanks. he looked at jane seaton, but she had the front of her bathing-machine turned toward harry loring, so did not see him. he made a long oration, and concluded by observing,-"how can there be any difficulty in following the advice my gallant friend, sir francis futtock, has given me, when i see myself surrounded by so many angelic creatures, any of whom a prince might be proud to make his bride?" loud shouts of applause from the gentlemen--odd looks and doubtful smiles from the chaperones--blushes deep from the young ladies--each one of whom, who was not already in love, thought she should like to become mrs hearty, provided lord lorimer did not ask her to become lady lorimer; while henry flareup was discovered squeezing the hand of miss mary masthead. "oh that i were a prince, then!" whispered loring into miss seaton's blue shade. thus passed on the day. if there was not much real wit, there was a great deal of hearty laughter; and stores of health and good spirits were laid in for the future. loring sang some capital songs, carstairs spouted, and bubble floated about, throwing in a word whenever he saw any one silent, or looking as if about to become dull; while young flareup, who was anxious to do his best, laughed loudly, for want of any other talent to amuse the company. as the vessels came to haul their wind in order to save the tide back to cowes, it was curious to observe how they appeared to vanish. one could scarcely tell what had become of the immense crowd we had just before seen astern of us. scattered far and wide in every direction, there seemed not to be one-quarter of the number which were before to be seen. we got back soon after eight o'clock, every one assuring hearty that they had spent a most delightful day. chapter three. a voyage--the mariners' return. "i say, old fellows, don't you find this rather slow?" exclaimed hearty, as one morning carstairs, bubble, and i sat at breakfast with him on board the "frolic." "what say you to a cruise to the westward, over to the coast of france and the channel islands, just for ten days or a fortnight or so?" "agreed, agreed, agreed!" we all answered. "well, then, to-morrow or next day we sail," said hearty. "but how can you, carstairs, tear yourself away from your pretty widow? bubble, you don't mean to say that you can leave sweet may sandon without a sigh?" "a little absence will try the widow; it will teach her to miss me, and she will value me more when i return," was carstairs' answer. "but you, bubble, what do you say?" for he did not answer. will was guilty of blushing, for i saw the rosy hue appearing even through his sunburnt countenance, though the others did not. "that is the best thing we can do," he answered, with a loud laugh. "hurrah for the broad seas, and a rover's free life!" "i thought so--i thought there was nothing in it," said hearty. "happy dog!--you never fall in love; you never care for any one." "ah, no: i laugh, sing, and am merry!" exclaimed bubble. "it's all very well for you fellows with your five or ten thousand a year to fall in love; you have hope to live on, if nothing else--no insurmountable obstacles; but for poverty-stricken wretches, like me and a dozen more i could name, it can only bring misery: yet i don't complain of poverty-no cares, no responsibilities; if one has only one's self to look after, it matters little; but should one unhappily meet with some being who to one's eye is lovely, towards whom one's heart yearns unconsciously, and one longs to make her one's own, then one begins to feel what poverty really is--then the galling yoke presses on one's neck. can you then be surprised that i, and such as i, throw care away, and become the light frivolous wretches we seem? hearty, my dear fellow, don't you squander your money, or you will repent it!" bubble spoke with a feeling for which few would have given him credit. he directly afterwards, however, broke into his usual loud laugh, adding,-"don't say that i have been moralising, or i may be suspected of incipient insanity." "will bubble has made out a clear case that he cannot be in love, for no one accuses him of being overburdened with the gifts of fortune," i observed; for i saw that he was more in earnest than he would have wished to be supposed. "but do you, hearty, wish to desert miss seaton, and leave the stage clear for loring?" "oh, i never enter the lists with a man who can sing," answered hearty. "those imitators of orpheus have the same winning way about them which their great master possessed. but, at the same time, i'll bet ten to one that the fair jane never becomes mrs loring. i had a little confab the other day with madame la mere, and faith, she's about as fierce a she-dragon as ever guarded an enchanted princess from the attempts of knights-errant to rescue her." "i'll take your bet, and for once stake love against lucre!" exclaimed bubble, and the bet was booked. but enough of this. we bade our friends farewell; and, in spite of all their attempts to detain us, we laid in a stock of provisions to last us for a month, and with a fine breeze from the northward, actually found our way through the needles just as the sun was tinging the topmost pinnacles of those weather-worn rocks. as soon as we were through the passage, we kept away, and shaped a course for havre de grace. the wind shifted round soon afterwards to the westward, and i shall not forget the pure refreshing saltness of the breeze which filled our nostrils, and added strength and vigour to our limbs. what a breakfast we ate afterwards! there seemed no end to it. our caterer had done well to lay in a store of comestibles. our perfect happiness lasted till nearly noon, and then the wind increased and the sea got up in a not unusual manner. we went below to take luncheon, and we set to in first-rate style, as if there was no such thing as the centre of gravity to be disturbed. carstairs began to look a little queer. "`thus far into the bowels of the earth have we marched on without impediment,' shakespeare, hum"--he began. he was going to give us the whole speech, but instead, he exclaimed, "o ye gods and little fishes!" and bolted up on deck. hearty, the joyous and free, followed. they declared that they felt as if the cook had mixed ipecacuanha in the sausages they had eaten for breakfast. bubble laughed, lighted a cigar, and sat on the companion-hatch with one leg resting on the deck, the other carelessly dangling down, with the independence of a king on his throne, pitying them. oh, how they envied him; how they almost hated him, as cigar after cigar disappeared, and still there he sat without a sign of discomposure! at dark we made the havre light, and an hour afterwards, and an hour afterwards, the tide being high, we ran in and dropped our anchor in smooth water. wonderful was the change which quietude worked on all hands! "supper, supper!" was the cry. even will and i did justice to it, though we had had a quiet little dinner by ourselves in the midst of our friends' agony, off pickled salmon and roast duck, with a gooseberry tart and a bottle of champagne. next morning we sailed with the wind back again to the north-east, and, notwithstanding the little inconveniences we had suffered on the passage across, we stood to the westward, and heroically determined to run through the race of alderney, to pay a visit to jersey. there was a nice breeze, and i must say we were glad there was no more of it, as we ran through the passage between alderney and the french coast. the water seemed possessed; it tumbled and leaped and twisted and danced in a most extraordinary and unnatural manner; and several seas toppled right down on our decks, and we could not help fancying that some huge fish had jumped on board. however, with a fair wind and a strong tide we were soon through it, nor was there danger of any sort; but from the specimen we had we could judge what it would be in a strongish gale. the wind had got round to the southward of west, and before we had managed to weather cape gronez the tide turned against us. cape gronez is the north-west point of jersey, and bears a strong similarity to the nose of louis philippe, as his portrait used to be represented in "punch." we had an opportunity of judging of it, for, for upwards of an hour did we beat between it and those enticing rocks called very properly the paternosters, for if a ship once strikes on them, it is to be hoped that the crew, being roman catholics, will, if they have time, say their paternosters before they go to the bottom. at last it came on very thick, we ran back and anchored in a most romantic little cove called bouley bay, where we remained all night, hoping the wind would not shift to the northward, and send us on shore. i should advise all timid yachtsmen to keep clear of jersey, for what with the rapid tides, and rocks innumerable, it is a very ticklish locality. the next morning we got under way at daybreak, and brought up off elizabeth castle, which guards the entrance of the harbour of st. heliers. i have not time to describe jersey. i can only recommend all who have not seen it, and wish to enjoy some very beautiful scenery, to go there. two days more saw us crossing to torbay, which we reached on the morning of the regatta. had an artist been employed to carve the cliffs on which torbay is situated, he could scarcely have made them more picturesque, or added tints more suitable, except perhaps that they are a little more red than one might wish. however, it is a very beautiful place, and admirably adapted for a regatta. the bay before the town was crowded with yachts, and i counted no less than fourteen large schooners, among which i remember the "brilliant," which, however, should be called a ship, "gypsy queen," "dolphin," "louisa," and a vast number of cutters, a large proportion of which were gayly dressed up with flags. the course is round the bay, so that the yachts are in sight the whole time--an advantage possessed by few other places. the "heroine," "cygnet," and "cynthia," sailed, but the race was not a good one, as the "heroine," driven to windward by her antagonist, ran her bowsprit into one of the mark boats, and another of them, the "cynthia," making a mistake, did not go round her at all. notwithstanding this, the sight was as beautiful of its kind as i ever saw. there was a ball at night, to which we went, and we flattered ourselves that four dancing bachelors were not unwelcome. we met a number of acquaintances. hearty lost his heart for the tenth time since he left london. the gentle giant, as the miss rattlers called carstairs, looked out for a charmer, but could find none to surpass mrs skyscraper. bubble laughed with all but sighed with none, though hearty accused him of flirtations innumerable; and i never chronicle my own deeds, however fond i may be of noting those of my friends. however, if we did not break hearts, we passed a very pleasant evening. hearty invited everybody he knew to come on board the next morning, and we went as far as dartmouth, and a beautiful sail back we had by moonlight, to the great delight of the romantic portion of the guests. they were a very quiet set of ladies and gentlemen, and more than one sigh was heaved when they had gone on shore for our fast friends at cowes. we were present at the plymouth regatta, and were going to several other places, when, one day after dinner, hearty thus gave utterance to his thoughts. we were about a quarter of the way across channel on our passage to the french coast, with a stiffish breeze from the westward, and a chopping sea:-"it seems to me arrant folly that we four bachelors should keep turning up the salt water all the summer, and boxing about from place to place which we don't care to visit, when there are a number of fair ladies at cowes who are undoubtedly pining for our return." "my own idea," exclaimed carstairs. "your argument is unanswerable," said bubble. i nodded. "all agreed--then we'll up stick for the wight," said hearty joyfully. "the wind's fair. we shall be there some time to-morrow. hillo, jack! beg the master to step below." this was said to a lad who waited at table and assisted the steward. old snow, the master, soon made his appearance. he had been a yachtsman for many years, and previously, if his yarns were to be believed, a smuggler of no mean renown. he was a short man, rather fat, for good living had not been thrown away on him, and very neat and clean in his person, as became the master of a yacht. "we want to get back to cowes, snow," said hearty. "yes, sir," answered the skipper, well accustomed to sudden changes in the plans of his yachting masters. "how soon can we get there?" asked hearty. "if we keeps away at once, and this here wind holds, early to-morrow; but, if it falls light, not till the afternoon, maybe; and, if it chops round to the eastward, not till next morning," replied snow. "by all means keep away at once, and get there as fast as you can," said hearty; and the master disappeared from the cabin. directly afterwards we heard him call the hands aft to case off the main-sheet, the square-sail and gaff-topsail were set, and, by the comparatively easy motion, we felt that we were running off before the wind. not a little did it contribute to our comfort in concluding our dinner. the next day, at noon, saw us safely anchored in cowes roads. "there's mr hearty and the gentle giant, i declare," exclaimed the melodious voice of miss susan rattler, from out of a shrubbery, as my two friends were pacing along on the road towards egypt, to call on lady cardiff. "oh, the dear men! you don't say so, susan!" replied her sister. bubble and i were close under them, a little in advance, so they did not see us, though we could not avoid hearing what was said. "yes, it's them, i vow; we must attack them about the pic-nic forthwith," said susan. "don't mention jane seaton, or poor ned will be too much out of spirits to do any thing," observed her sister. "trust me to manage all descriptions of he-animals," replied rattler minima. "ah, how d'ye do?--how d'ye do? welcome, rovers, welcome!" she exclaimed, waving her handkerchief as they approached. "lovely ladies, we once more live in your presence," began hearty. "`oh that i were a glove upon that hand!'" shouted carstairs. "oh, don't, you'll make us blush!" screamed susan, from over the bushes. "but seriously, we're so glad you're come, because now we can have the pic-nic to netley you promised us." "i like frankness--when shall it be?" said hearty. "to-morrow, by all means,--never delay a good thing." "`if 'twere done, 'twere well 'twere done quickly,'" observed the captain. "that's what shakespeare says about a beef-steak," cried susan. "but i say then, it's settled--how nice!" "what? that we are to have beef-steaks?" asked hearty. "they are very nice when one's hungry." "no, i mean that we are to have a pic-nic to-morrow," said the fair rattler. "that depends whether those we invite are willing to join it," observed hearty. "`i can summon spirits from the vasty deep; but will they come, cousin?'" exclaimed carstairs. "oh, yes, in these parts, often," cried rattler maxima; "the revenue officers constantly find them, i know." "capital--capital!" ejaculated hearty. "you must bring that out again on board the `frolic.' you deserve a pic-nic for it; it's so original. you must consider this only as a rehearsal." "how kind--then it's all settled!" exclaimed both young ladies in a breath. "there's mary masthead, i know, is dying to go, and so is mrs topgallant, and i dare say, if captain carstairs presses mrs skyscraper, she'll go, and the sandons and cardiffs, and all our set; i don't think any will refuse." "well, then, we've no time to lose," we exclaimed, and off we set to beat up for recruits. we were not, however, without our disappointments. lady cardiff could not go, and without a correct chaperone she could not let her daughter be of the party--the thing was utterly impossible, dreadfully incorrect, and altogether unheard of. mrs skyscraper was a great deal too young, and being a widow had herself to look after. if mrs topgallant would go, she would see about it; so we tried next to find the lady in question, but she had gone to carisbrooke castle, and would not be back till late. mrs sandon was next visited, but she had a cold; and if lady cardiff would not let her daughter go without a chaperone, neither could she. we by chance met mrs seaton with the fair jane, looking very beautiful, but mamma never went on the water if she could help it. she could not come to the island without doing so; but once safe there, she would not set her foot in a boat till she had to go away again. sooth to say, that was not surprising; the good dame was unsuited by her figure for locomotion. every thing depended on mrs topgallant; never was she in so much request. the gentlemen being able to come without chaperones, more readily promised to be present. we fell in with sir francis futtock, lord lorimer, harry loring, and young flareup, and a young oxonian, who had lately taken orders, and created a great sensation among the more sensitive portion of his audience by his exquisite preaching, and the unction by which he privately recommended auricular confession and penance. the rev frederick fairfax was a pink-faced young man, and had naturally a round, good-natured countenance, but by dint of shaving his whiskers, elongating his face, and wearing a white cravat without gills, and a stand-up collar to his coat, he contrived to present a no bad imitation of a jesuit priest. the miss rattlers called him the paragon puseyite, or the pp, which they said would stand as well for parish priest. how hearty came to invite him i don't know, for he detested the silly clique to whom the youth had attached himself. we had just left the young gentleman when we met the two merry little miss masons. at first they could not possibly go, because they had no chaperone; but when they heard that the rev frederick was to be of the party, all their scruples vanished. with such a pastor they might go anywhere. they had only lately been bitten, but had ever since diligently applied themselves to the study of the "tracts of the times;" and though not a word did they understand of those works (which was not surprising by the by), they perceived that the rev fred's voice was very melodious, that he chanted to admiration, and looked so pious that they could not be wrong in following his advice. at last the hearts of all were made glad by the appearance of mrs topgallant, who, without much persuasion, undertook to chaperone as many young ladies as were committed to her charge. chapter four. a pic-nic, and its consequences. the morning came at last, fine as the palpitating hearts of expectant damsels could desire, and calm enough to please the most timid chaperone; so calm, indeed, that it was a question whether any craft with canvas alone to depend on could move from her moorings with a chance of going anywhere except to hurst or the nab; but, as few of our lady friends had any nautical knowledge, that in no way disconcerted them, and they would not have believed us had we assured them that there was too little wind for the excursion. by noon, however, a few cats'-paws appeared on the lake-like surface of the water, and soon after the deck of the "frolic" once more began to rejoice in the presence of many of the former frolickers. they found it easy enough to come on board, but to collect all hands and get under way was a very different thing. the miss sandons and jane seaton, who came escorted by loring, on finding no chaperone, thought they ought to go on shore again, as neither mrs topgallant nor mrs skyscraper had come; but sir francis kept them discussing the point till carstairs had time to dive below, and presently returned with a norman cap on his head, a shawl over his shoulders, and a boat-cloak as a petticoat. "there," he exclaimed, crossing his arms before him, and putting his head on one side, sentimentally, "i'm as good a duenna as mrs topgallant, or any other lady of your acquaintance." all laughed and forgot to go. "come, my dear girls, sit down and behave yourselves; no flirting with that naval officer, if you please," he continued, imitating the honourable dame. "you, mr loring, and you, mr henry flareup, go forward and smoke your cigars. i can't allow such nasty practices here." flareup had, as usual, lighted his weed, and was sending the smoke into the face of may sandon. the roars of laughter were not few as the real mrs topgallant, with miss mary masthead, approached, and the norman cap with the good-natured face of the wearer was seen looking over the side affectionately down upon them. the rev fred and the miss masons next arrived, and lastly mrs skyscraper, miss cardiff, lord lorimer, and hearty. "now, remember, mr hearty, we must get back before dark; it is on that condition alone that i have consented to chaperone these young ladies," said mrs topgallant, as we were about to get under way. "and i, also," exclaimed pretty mrs skyscraper. "oh, we don't allow you to be a chaperone," said carstairs; "you are far too young and too engaging," he whispered; and the gentle giant actually blushed as he said so; luckily miss susan rattler did not hear him. "and mamma made me promise to be back at eight," cried jane seaton. "and so did ours!" echoed the three miss sandons. "you know we could not have come at all unless we were certain of being at home in proper time!" exclaimed the two miss masons; "could we, mr fairfax?" the pet bowed and smiled. he was meditating on the life of st. euphemia, of rhodes, and did not hear the question. "remember, ladies, that time and tide wait for no man," answered hearty. "even such fair goddesses as honour the `frolic' by their presence this day cannot govern the winds and waves, however much they may every thing else. therefore all i can promise is, to do my best to follow the wishes of your amiable mammas, and of yourselves." "and of mine, if you please, mr hearty," put in mrs topgallant. "certainly, my dear madam, i considered you among the goddesses of whom i was speaking," answered hearty, with a flourish of his broad-brimmed beaver, which, with the compliment, completely won the honourable lady's heart. the anchor was at last weighed, and it being fortunately slack tide, with a light air from the south-east, we were able to fetch calshot castle. most of my readers probably know the southampton water, and may picture us to themselves as we floated up the stream with the round, solid, stilton-cheese-like-looking castle of calshot, at the end of a sandy spit, and the lordly tower of eaglehurst, rising among the trees visible over it on the one hand, and the mouth of the hamble river on the other, while, as far as the eye can reach on either hand, are seen verdant groves, with the roofs and chimneys of numerous villas peeping from among them. about three-quarters of the way up, on the right hand, at a short distance only from the water, stand the picturesque ruins of netley abbey. the jolly monks of old--and i respect them for it--always selected the most beautiful sites in the neighbourhood for their habitations, and in fixing on that for netley, they did not depart from their rule. several chambers remain; and the walls which surround an inner court are entire, with fine arched windows, the tracery work complete, looking into it. we brought up off it, and the boats were instantly lowered to convey the passengers on shore. in getting into one of them, loring nearly went overboard, and a shriek of terror from jane seaton would have published her secret, had not everybody known it before. at last the hampers and the people reached the beach in safety; and now began the difficulties of the chaperone. she was like a shepherd with a wild flock of sheep and no dog; they would stray in every direction out of her sight. some had brought sketch-books, and perched themselves about, far apart, to take views of the ruins; others preferred what they called exploring; and jane and loring vanished no one knew where. the gentle giant, who drew very well, was called on by the miss rattlers and several other ladies to fill up the pages of their books; and hearty was running about talking to everybody and ordering every thing; while bubble was exerting himself to do the same, and to take sketches into the bargain, though all his friends observed that there was a want of his usual vivacity. the rattler girls quizzed him unmercifully, till they brought him back to the semblance, at all events, of his former self. the servants had been employed in laying the cloth under the shade of a tree which had sprung up in the courtyard, and thither hearty's voice now summoned us. how can pen of mine do justice to the cold collation which was spread before our rejoicing eyes! i can only say that the party did it, and amply too. "are we all here?" exclaimed the master of the revels. "no, by bacchus! two are wanting--miss seaton and mr loring--where are they?" "good gracious! where can they be?" screamed the honourable mrs topgallant. "what can have become of them?" cried mrs skyscraper. "they probably did not hear you call, and i dare say they are not far off," suggested miss cardiff, always anxious to find a good excuse for her acquaintance. "i should not wonder but what they have eloped," observed miss susan rattler. "what fun!" said miss mary masthead; "we haven't had such a thing for a long time." "how shocking!" ejaculated the miss masons in a breath, and looked at the rev frederick. "i'll wager i find the truants," said bubble, about to go; but he was saved the trouble, for at that moment they appeared; the fair jane looking very confused--harry loring remarkably happy. "we've all been talking about you two," blurted out hearty. "no scandal though, so sit down and enable us to recover our appetites, for our anxiety nearly took them away. now tell us, what have you been doing?" poor jane did not know which way to look, nor what to say; and it never occurred to hearty that his question might possibly confuse her. loring, however, came to the rescue. "admiring the architecture, exploring everywhere, and examining every thing, which no one else appears to have done, or the dinner-bell would not have been answered so speedily. and now, old fellow, i'll drink a glass of champagne with you." this would not blind us, however. every one saw what he had been about, and no small blame to him either. of course, no one further hinted at the subject. after dinner we again wandered about the ruins, and the shades of evening surprised us while still there, to the great horror of mrs topgallant, and not a little to that of the miss masons, who had been so earnestly listening to a discourse of the rev frederick on the importance of reviving monasteries, that they did not observe the sun set. "hillo, ladies and gentlemen! we ought to be on board again," sung out hearty, from the top of a high wall to which he had climbed. "there is no time to be lost, if we would not displease our mammas." a good deal of time, however, was lost in collecting the scattered sheep, and in carrying down the baskets to the boats, which the servants had neglected to do. when we did at length reach the spot at which we had landed, a bank of mud was alone to be seen, and one of the men brought us the pleasing intelligence that the nearest place at which we could possibly embark was about a mile down the river. "we here have a convincing proof that time and tide wait for no one," cried bubble; "or the latter would certainly have remained up for the convenience of so many charming young ladies." "shocking!" exclaimed mrs topgallant. "what will our mammas say?" ejaculated all the fair damsels. "that it's very improper," said the chaperone-general. "it can't be helped now; so if we do not intend to spend the night on the beach, we had better keep moving," observed one of the gentlemen. henry flareup expressed his opinion that the dismay their non-arrival would cause would be jolly fun, and the miss rattlers were in ecstasies of delight at the _contretemps_. however, no one grumbled very much, and at last we reached the boats. a new difficulty then arose. they barely floated with the crews in them, but with passengers on board they would be aground. the men had to get out, and, as it was, the only approach to them was over wet mud of a soft nature, yet no persuasions would induce the ladies to be carried to them. mrs topgallant would not hear of such a thing, and boldly led the van through the mud. the young ladies followed, nearly losing their shoes, and most effectually draggling (i believe it is a proper word) their gowns. hearty counted them off to see, as he said, that none were missing; and then began the work of getting the boats afloat, one or two of the ladies, not accustomed to yachting, being dreadfully alarmed at seeing the men jump overboard, to lift them along. huzza! off we went at last, and pulled towards the "frolic." "let's get back as fast as we can, snow," exclaimed hearty, as soon as he stepped on deck. "beg pardon, sir, it won't be very fast, though," answered the master. "why, how is that?" asked hearty; "an hour and a half will do it, won't it?" "bless your heart, no, sir," said old snow, almost laughing at the idea. "it's just dead low water, so the flood will make up for the best part of the next six hours, and after that, if there doesn't come more wind than we has now, we shan't make no great way." "but let us at all events get up our anchor and try to do something," urged hearty, whose ideas of navigation were not especially distinct at the time. "if we does, sir, we shall drive up to southampton, or maybe, to redbridge, for there ain't an hair in all the 'eavens," was the encouraging answer given by the master. i never saw a more perfect calm. a candle was lighted on deck, and the flame went straight up as if in a room. if we had been in a tropical climate we should have looked out for a hurricane. here nothing so exciting was to be apprehended. the conversation with the master was not overheard by any of the ladies, and hearty thought it was as well to say nothing about it, but to leave them to suppose that we were on our way back to cowes. "it is much too dark to distinguish the shore, and as none of them ever think of looking at the sails, they will not discover that we are still at anchor," he observed; and so it proved, as we shall presently see. the after-cabin had been devoted to the use of the fairer portion of the guests, and when they got there and found the muddy condition of their dresses, there was a general cry for hot water to wash them. luckily the cook's coppers could supply a good quantity, and two tubs were sent aft, in which, as was afterwards reported--for we were not allowed to be spectators of the process--the honourable mrs topgallant and her _protegees_ were busily employed in rinsing their skirts, though it was not quite so easy a matter to dry them. tea and coffee were next served up in the main cabin, and cakes and muffins and toast in profusion were produced, and as carstairs quietly observed, "never were washerwomen more happy." there was only one thing wanting, we had not sufficient milk; and that there might be no scarcity in future, it was proposed to send the steward on shore with henry flareup to swap him for a cow to be kept on board instead. he was fixed on as the victim, as it was considered that he had been making too much love to one of the miss sandons, conduct altogether unbecoming one of his tender years. "we have passed a very pleasant evening, mr hearty, i can assure you," said the chaperone; "and as i suppose we shall soon be there, we had better get ready to go on shore." "we shall have time for a dance first; we have had the deck cleared, and the musicians are ready," replied hearty; "may i have the honour of opening the ball with you, mrs topgallant?" "oh, i don't know what to say to such a thing--i'm afraid it will be very incorrect; and at all events you must excuse me, mr hearty, i shall have quite enough to do to look after my charges." and as mrs topgallant said this, she glanced round at the assembled young ladies. "a dance, a dance, by all means!" exclaimed the miss rattlers; "what capital fun." a dance was therefore agreed on, and we went on deck, which we found illuminated with all the lanterns and spare lamps which could be found on board; and even candles without any shade were stuck on the taffrail, and the boom was topped up, so as to be completely out of the way. we owed the arrangements to bubble, carstairs, and the master, who had been busily employed while the rest were below at tea. an exclamation of delight burst from the lips of the young ladies; the musicians struck up a polka, and in another minute all hands were footing it away as gayly as in any ball-room, and with far more merriment and freedom. ye gentlemen and ladies who stay at home at ease, ah, little do ye think upon the fun there's on the seas! how we did dance! no one tired. even mrs topgallant got up and took a turn with the gentle giant, and very nearly went overboard, by the by. we had no hot lamps, no suffocating perfumed atmosphere, to oppress us, as in a london ball-room. the clear sky was our ceiling, the cool water was around us. every gentleman had danced with every lady, except that loring had taken more than his share with miss seaton, before we thought of giving in. "well, i wonder we don't get there!" on a sudden exclaimed mrs topgallant, as if something new had struck her. there was a general laugh, set, i am sorry to say, by sir francis futtock. "why, my dear madam, we have not begun to go yet." "not begun to go!" cried the miss masons. "what will be said of us?" "not begun to go!" groaned the rev fred. "what will my flock do without me?" "why, i thought we had been moving all the time. we have passed a number of objects which i should have taken for ghosts, if i believed in such things," said mrs topgallant. "those were vessels going up with the tide, my dear madam, to southampton, where we should have gone also," observed sir francis. just then a tall dark object came out of the gloom, and glided by us at a little distance. it certainly had what one might suppose the appearance of a spirit wandering over the face of the waters. "cutter, ahoy! what cutter is that?" hailed a voice from the stranger. "it's one of them revenue chaps," said snow. "the `frolic' yacht; edward hearty, esq, owner!" answered the old man; "and be hanged to you," he muttered. "`i'll call thee king--father, royal dane. oh, answer me!'" continued carstairs. "he'll not answer you--so avast spouting, and let's have another turn at dancing!" exclaimed hearty, interrupting the would-be actor, and dragging him, to the side of mrs skyscraper, who did not refuse his request to dance another quadrille. thus at it again we went, to the no small amusement of a number of spectators, whose voices could be heard round us. their boats were just dimly visible, though, from the bright lights on our deck, we could not see the human beings on board them. at last the rippling sound against our bows ceasing, gave notice that the tide had slackened, and that we might venture on lifting anchor. a light air also sprang up from the eastward, and slowly we began to move on our right course. some of the un-nauticals, however, forgot that with an ebb tide and an easterly wind there was not much chance of our reaching cowes in a hurry. a thick fog also began to rise from the calm water; and after the dancing, for fear of their catching cold, cloaks and coats, plaids and shawls, were in great requisition among the young ladies. mrs topgallant insisted that they would all be laid up, and that they must go below till they got into cowes harbour. "she was excessively angry," she said, "with mr hearty for keeping them out in this way; and as for sir francis futtock, a captain in her majesty's navy, she was, indeed, surprised that such a thing could happen while he was on board." "but, my dear madam," urged sir francis, in his defence, "you know that accidents will happen in the best-regulated families. nobody asked my advice, and i could not venture to volunteer it, or i might have foretold what has happened. however, come down below, and i trust no harm will ensue." after some persuasion, the good lady was induced to go below, and to rest herself on a sofa in one of the sleeping-cabins, the door of which harry flareup quietly locked, at a hint from hearty, who then told the young ladies that, as cerberus was chained, they might now do exactly what they liked. i must do them the justice to say that they behaved very well. there was abundance of laughter, however, especially when miss susan rattler appeared habited in a large box-coat belonging to captain carstairs. it had certainly nothing yachtish about it. it was of a whitey-brown hue, with great horn buttons and vast pockets. it was thoroughly roadish, it smelt of the road, its appearance was of the road. it reminded one of the days of four-in-hand coaches; and many a tale it could doubtless tell of newmarket; of races run, of bets booked. not content with wearing the coat, susan was persuaded to try a cigar. she puffed away manfully for some time. "you look a very jemmy young gent, indeed you do," observed the gentle giant, looking up at her as he sat at her feet. "what would your mamma say if she saw you?" "what an odious custom you men have of smoking," cried hearty, pretending not to see who was the culprit. "in the presence of ladies, too," exclaimed loring, really ignorant of the state of the case. poor susan saw that she was laughed at, and, beginning probably at the same time to feel a little sick from the fumes of the tobacco, she was not sorry of an excuse for throwing carstairs' best havana into the water. as the fog settled over us rather heavily, not only were the more delicate part of the company wrapped up in cloaks and shawls, but we got up the blankets and counterpanes from the cabins, and swaddled them up completely in them, while the gentlemen threw themselves along at their feet, partly in a fit of romantic gallantry, and partly, it is just possible, to assist in keeping themselves warm. carstairs recited shakespeare all night long, and loring sang some capital songs. by this time we had got down to calshot; and, as the tide was now setting down pretty strong, we appeared to be going along at a good rate. "how soon shall we be in, captain?" asked one of the miss masons of the skipper, who was at the helm. "that depends, miss, whether a breeze comes before we get down to yarmouth or hurst; because, if we keep on, we shan't be far off either one or the other, before the tide turns," was the unsatisfactory answer. "keep on, by all means, snow," exclaimed hearty, who had not heard all that was said; "i promised to do my best to get in, and we must keep at it." so tideward we went; the little wind there had been dropping altogether. presently we heard a hail. "what cutter is that?" "the `frolic.'" "please, sir, we were sent out to look for you, to bring mrs topgallant and miss masons, and some other ladies, on shore." there was a great deal of talk, but hearty had determined that no one should leave the yacht. mrs topgallant was below, and could not be disturbed; besides, the other young ladies could not be left without a chaperone. the miss masons wanted to go in company with their pastor, but it would not exactly do to be out in a boat alone with the rev fred. as that gentleman was afraid of catching cold, he was at the time safe below, and knew nothing of what was taking place, so the boat was sent off without a freight. hearty vowed that he would fire on any other boat which came near us to carry off any of his guests. thus the night wore on. it would be impossible to record all the witty things which were said, all the funny things which were done, and all the laughter which was laughed. all i can say is, that the ladies and gentlemen were about as unlike as possible to what they would have been in town during the season. hour after hour passed rapidly away, and not a little surprised were they when the bright streaks of dawn appeared in the eastern sky, and egypt point was seen a long way off in the same direction, while the vessel was found to be turning round and round without any steerage-way. now it was very wrong and very improper, and i don't mean for a moment to defend our conduct, though, by the by, the fault was all hearty's; but it was not till half-past eleven of the next day that the party set foot once more upon the shore. never was there a merrier pic-nic; and, what is more, in spite of wet feet and damp fogs, no one was a bit the worse for it. looking in at the post-office, i found a letter summoning me immediately to london. sending a note to hearty, to tell him of my departure, i set off forthwith, and reached the modern babylon that same night. how black and dull and dingy it looked; how hot it felt; how smoky it smelt! i was never celebrated for being a good man of business; but on the present occasion i worked with a will, and it was wonderful with what rapidity i got through the matter in hand, and once more turned my back on the mighty metropolis. chapter five. true love runs anything but smooth--being a melancholy subject, i cut it short. the day after my return i met harry loring. alas, how changed was the once joyous expression of his countenance! "my dear fellow, what is the matter?" i asked. "what, don't you know?" he exclaimed. "i thought all the world did, and laughed at me. false, fickle, heartless flirting!" "what is all this about?" i asked. "i deeply regret, i feel--" "oh, of course you do," he replied, interrupting me petulantly. "i'll tell you how it was. she had accepted me, as you may have guessed, and i made sure that there would be no difficulties, as she has plenty of money, though i have little enough; but when there is sufficient on one side, what more can be required? at last one day she said, `i wish, mr loring, you would speak to mamma' (she had always called me harry before). `of course i will,' said i, thinking it was a hint to fix the day; but after i left her, my mind misgave me. well, my dear fellow, as i dare say you know, that same having to speak to papa or mamma is the most confoundedly disagreeable thing of all the disagreeables in life, when one hasn't got a good rent-roll to show. at least, after all the billing and cooing, and the romance and sentiment of love, it is such a worldly, matter-of-fact, pounds-shillings-and-pence affair, that it is enough to disgust a fellow. however, i nerved myself up for the encounter, and was ushered into the presence of the old dragon." "you shouldn't speak of your intended mother-in-law in that way," i observed, interrupting him. "my intended--; but you shall hear," he continued. "`well, sir, i understand that you have favoured my daughter with an offer,' she began. i didn't like the tone of her voice nor the look of her green eye,-they meant mischief. `i have had the happiness of being accepted by'--`stay, stay!' she exclaimed, interrupting me. `my daughter would not think of accepting you without asking my leave; and i, as a mother, must first know what fortune you can settle on her.' `every thing she has got or ever will have,' i replied, as fast as i could utter the words. `my father and mother are excellent people, and they have kindly offered us a house, and'--`is that it, mr loring? and you have nothing--absolutely nothing?' shrieked out the old woman. oh, how i hated her! `then, sir, i beg you will clearly understand, that from this moment all communication between you and my daughter ceases for ever. i could not have believed that any gentleman would have been guilty of such impertinence. what! a man without a penny to think of marrying my daughter, with her beauty and her fortune! there, sir, you have got my answer; i hope you understand it. go, sir; go!' i did go, without uttering another word, though i gave her a look which ought to have confounded her; and here you see me a miserable, heartbroken man. i have been in vain trying to get a glimpse of jane, to ask her if it was by her will that i am thus discarded, and if so, to whistle her down the wind; but i have dreadful suspicions that it was a plot between them to get rid of me, and if so, i have had a happy escape." i have an idea that his last suspicion was right. poor fellow, i pitied him. it struck me as a piece of arrant folly on the part of the mother, that a nice, gentlemanly, good-looking fellow should be sent to the right-about simply because he was poor, when the young lady had ample fortune for them both. "look here!" exclaimed loring, bitterly; "is it not enough to make a man turn sick with grief and pain as he looks round and sees those he once knew as blooming, nice girls growing into crusty old maids, because their parents chose to insist on an establishment and settlement for them equal to what they themselves enjoy, instead of remembering the altered circumstances of the times? not one man in ten has a fortune; and if the talents and energy of the rising generation are not to be considered as such, hymen may blow out his torch and cut his stick, and the fair maidens of england will have to sing for ever and a day, `nobody coming to marry me, nobody coming to woo.'" i laughed, though i felt the truth of what he said. "but are you certain that you are disinterested? were you in no way biassed in your love by her supposed-fortune?" i asked. "on my word, i was not. i never thought of the tin," was the answer. "then," i replied, "i must say that you are a very ill-used gentleman." chapter six. how to kill time--the o'wiggins--england's bulwarks--jack mizen and the "fun"--her fair crew--naval heroes and nautical heroines. i had promised to yacht during the summer with hearty; and as he paid me the compliment of saying that he could not do without me, notwithstanding several other invitations i had received, i felt myself in honour bound to rejoin the "frolic." i had no disinclination to so doing, though i own at times we led rather a more rollicking life than altogether suited my taste. accordingly, i once more took up my berth aboard the "frolic." hearty was growing somewhat tired of the style of life he was leading. he wanted more variety, more excitement. indeed, floating about inside the isle of wight with parties of ladies on board is all very well in its way to kill time, but unless one of the fair creatures happens to be the only girl he ever loved, or, at all events, the only girl he loves just then, or the girl he loves best, he very soon wearies of the amusement, if he is worth any thing, and longs for the wide ocean, and a mixture of storms with sunshine and smooth water. i found the party on board the "frolic" increased by the addition of two. the most worthy of note was tom porpoise, a thorough seaman, and as good a fellow as ever stepped. he had entered into an arrangement with hearty to act as captain of the yacht; for though snow was a very good sailing-master, he was nothing of a navigator, and hearty was now contemplating a trip to really distant lands. porpoise was a lieutenant in the navy of some years' standing; he had seen a great deal of service, and was considered a good officer. he sang a good song, told a good story, and was always in good spirits and good humour. he had been in the syrian war, in china, on the coast of africa, and in south america; indeed, wherever there had been any fighting, or work of any sort to be done, there has dashing tom porpoise been found. he had a good appetite, and, as old snow used to say, his victuals did him good. porpoise was fat; there was no denying the fact, nor was he ashamed of it. his height was suited to the dimensions of a small craft, and then, having stated that his face was red, not from intemperance, but from sun and spray, i think that i have sufficiently described our most excellent chum. the other addition of note was ycleped gregory groggs. how hearty came to ask him on board i do not know. it could scarcely have been for his companionable qualities, nor for his general knowledge and information; for i had seldom met a more simple-minded creature--one who had seen less of the world, or knew less of its wicked ways. it was his first trip to sea, and he afforded us no little amusement by his surprise at every thing he beheld, and every thing which occurred. he had a tolerably strong inside; so, as we had fine weather, he fortunately for us and for himself, was seldom sea-sick. our friend groggs was a native of an inland county, from which he had never before stirred, when, having come into some little property, he was seized with a strong desire to see the world. he had been reading some book or other which had given him most extraordinary principles; and one of his ideas was, that people should marry others of a different nation, as the only way of securing peace throughout the world. he informed us that he should early put his principles into practice, and that, should he find some damsel to suit his taste in france, he should without fail wed her. we bantered him unmercifully on the subject; but, as is the case with many other people with one idea, that was not easily knocked out of his head. hearty, having fallen in with him on a visit to his part of the country, invited him, should he ever come to the sea-side, to visit the "frolic." by a wonderful chance, groggs did find his way on board the yacht, as she one day had gone up to southampton, and once on board, finding himself very comfortable, he exhibited no inclination to leave her. he therein showed his taste; and hearty, though at first he would have dispensed with his company, at last got accustomed to him, and would have been almost sorry to part with him. so much for groggs. we lay at anchor off cowes. several other vessels lay there also, mostly schooners--a rig which has lately much come into fashion. "what shall we do next?" exclaimed hearty, as we sat at table after dinner over our biscuits and wine. "what shall we do next?" said carstairs, repeating hearty's question; "why, i vote we go on deck and smoke a cigar." we had not time to execute the important proposal before the steward put his head into the cabin and announced a boat alongside. "who is it?" asked hearty. "mr o'wiggins, of the `popple' schooner, sir," answered the steward. "she brought up while you were at dinner, sir." "oh, ask him down below," said our host, throwing himself back in his chair with a resigned look, which said, more than words, "what a bore!" before the steward could reach the deck, o'wiggins was heard descending the companion-ladder. he was a tall, broadly-built man, with a strongly marked hibernian countenance. hearty did not think it necessary to rise to receive his guest, but o'wiggins, no way disconcerted, threw himself into a vacant chair. "ah, hearty, my boy! faith, i'm glad to find any one i know in this dull place," he exclaimed, stretching out his legs, and glancing round at the rest of us, as he helped himself from a decanter towards which hearty pointed. "we are not likely to be here long, but we are undecided what next to do," returned hearty. "och, then, i'll tell you what to do, my boy," said o'wiggins. "just look in at the regattas to the westward, and then run over to cherbourg. i've just come across from there, and all the world of france is talking of the grand naval review they are to have of a fleet, in comparison to which that of perfidious albion is as a collection of newcastle colliers. there'll be rare fun of one sort or another, depend on it; and, for my part, i wouldn't miss it on any account. what say your friends to the idea? i haven't had the pleasure of meeting them before, i think?" "i beg your pardon," said hearty; "i forgot to introduce them." and he did so in due form; at which o'wiggins seemed mightily pleased, and directly afterwards began addressing us familiarly by our patronymics, as if we were old friends. in fact, in a wonderfully short space of time he made himself perfectly at home. the proposal of the cherbourg expedition pleased us all; and it was finally agreed that we would go there. we could not help being amused with o'wiggins, in spite of the cool impudence of his manner. he told some capital stories, in which he always played a prominent part; and though we might have found some difficulty in believing them, they were not on that account the less entertaining. meantime coffee and cigars made their appearance. o'wiggins showed a determination to smoke below, and hearty could not insist on his going on deck: so we sat and sat on; porpoise enjoying the fun, and groggs listening with opening eyes to all the wonders related by our irish visitor, for whom he had evidently conceived a vast amount of admiration. at a late hour o'wiggins looked at his watch, and finding that his boat was alongside, he at length took his departure. we were present at most of the regattas to the westward, but as they differed but little from their predecessors for many years past, i need not describe them. no place equals plymouth for a regatta, either on account of the beauty of the surrounding scenery, or in affording a good view of the course from the shore. by the by, it was some little satisfaction to look at the two new forts run up on either side of the entrance to the harbour, as well as at the one with tremendously heavy metal between the citadel and devonport, not to speak of the screw guardships, which may steam out and take up a position wherever required. i can never forget the superb appearance of that mammoth of two-deckers, the "albion," with her ninety guns, and a tonnage greater than most three-deckers. it is said that she could not fight her lower-deck guns in a heavy sea; but one is so accustomed to hear the ignorant or unjust abuse and the falsehood levied at her talented builder, that one may be excused from crediting such an assertion. she is acknowledged to be fast; and, from looking at her, i should say that she has all the qualifications of a fighting ship, and a great power of stowage. what more can be required? [note.] if she is not perfect, it is what must be said of all human fabrics. if sir william symonds had never done more than get rid of those sea-coffins, the ten-gun brigs, and introduce a class of small craft superior to any before known in the service, the navy would have cause to be deeply indebted to him. he has enemies; but in the service i have generally found officers willing and anxious to acknowledge his merits. there is no little satisfaction in cruising about plymouth sound. i suspect that now our neighbours would not be so ready to attempt to surprise the place and to burn its arsenal, as they one fine night thought of doing some few years back. people in general are so accustomed to believe our sacred coasts impregnable, that they could not comprehend that such an enterprise was possible. yet i can assure my readers that not only was it possible, practicable, in contemplation, and that every preparation was made, but that we were perfectly helpless, and that they would indubitably have succeeded in doing all they intended. neither plymouth nor portsmouth were half fortified; and such fortifications as existed were not half garrisoned, while we could not have collected a fleet sufficient to have defended either one or the other. providentially the differences were adjusted in time, and the french had not the excuse of inflicting that long-enduring vengeance which they have a not unnatural desire to gratify. when they have thrashed us, and not till then, shall we be cordial friends; and, though electric wires and railroads keep up a constant communication, may that day be long distant! we had brought up just inside drake's island, which, as all who know plymouth are aware, is at the entrance of hamoaze. we were just getting under way, and were all on deck, when a cutter-yacht passed us, standing out of the harbour. our glasses were levelled at her to see who she carried, for bonnet-ribbons and shawls were fluttering in the breeze. "what cutter is that?" asked porpoise. "there's a remarkably pretty girl on board of her." "that must be--yes, i'm certain of it--that must be the `fun;' and, by jove, there's jolly jack mizen himself at the helm!" ejaculated hearty, with for him unusual animation. he waved his cap as the rest of us did, for porpoise and i knew mizen. mizen waved his in return, and shouted out,-"come and take a cruise with us. we'll expect you on board to lunch." "ay, ay!" shouted hearty, for there was no time for a longer answer before the yacht shot by us. we had soon sail made on the "frolic," and were standing after the "fun" towards the westernmost and broadest entrance to the sound. it was a lovely day, without a cloud in the sky, and a fine steady breeze; such a day as, from its rarity, one knows how to value in england. yachts of all sizes and many rigs were cruising about in the sound. largest of all was the "brilliant," a three-masted square-topsail schooner, of nearly 400 tons, belonging to mr ackers, the highly-esteemed commodore of the royal victoria yacht club; and as for the smallest, there were some with the burgee of a club flying, of scarcely ten tons. we, meantime, were standing after the "fun." her owner, jack mizen, had once been in the navy; but before he had risen above the exalted rank of a midshipman he had come into a moderate independence, and not being of an aspiring disposition, he had quitted the service, with the intention of living on shore and enjoying himself. he, after a few years, however, got tired of doing nothing, so he bought a yacht and went afloat, and, as he used to say,-"fool that i am! i have to pay for sailing about in a small craft, not knowing where to go or what to do, when, if i had stuck to the service, i might have got paid for sailing in a large ship, and have been told where to go and what to do. never leave a profession in a huff; you'll repent it once, and that will be to the end of your days, if you do." such was jack mizen. he was a jolly, good-natured fellow. he sang a good song, told a good story, and everybody liked him. he had seven ladies on board, two of whom we judged to be chaperones; the other five were young, and, if not pretty, were full of smiles and laughter. the "fun" was much smaller than the "frolic," so we easily kept way with her, and ran round the eddystone and hove-to, while the racing-vessels came round also. we four bachelors then went on board the "fun," and were welcomed not only by her owner, but by the many bright eyes she contained. there were already four or five gentlemen on board, but they had not done much to make themselves agreeable, so nearly all the work had fallen on mizen. we gladly came to his assistance: poor groggs, also, afforded them much amusement, but it was at his own expense--not the first person in a like position--unknown to himself. they were all talking about cherbourg, and had insisted on mizen's taken them over there. he, of course, was delighted. the main cabin was to be devoted to them. fortunately, however, one chaperone and two damsels could not go, so the rest might continue to rough it for a few nights. we had a large luncheon and much small talk. i mustn't describe the ladies, lest they should be offended. if i was to say that one of the chaperones was fat, and another tall, all the fat and tall elderly ladies on the water that day would consider i intended to represent them. however, there can be no risk in saying that the eldest, dame was mrs mizen, an aunt of the owner of the "fun," and chaperone-general to the party. the very pretty girl was laura mizen, her daughter, and the other married lady was mrs rullock, wife of commander rullock, rn, and who had also two unmarried daughters under her wing. of the other young ladies, one was fanny farlie, a rival in beauty, certainly, of laura mizen--it was difficult to say which was the prettiest--and another was her cousin, susan simms, who read novels, played on the piano, was devoted to the polka, and kept tame rabbits. it was perceptible to us, before we had been long on board, that mizen affected fanny, while miss mizen at once, with some effect, set her cap at hearty. she did not intend to do so, but she could not help it. she was not thinking of his fortune nor of his position, nor did she wish to become mistress of the "frolic." of the gentlemen, one was in the navy, lieutenant piper, an old messmate of mizen's, and mr simon simms, the brother of susan, who had an office in the dockyard, smoked cigars, and was very nautical in his propensities. there was a fat old gentleman and a thin major clay, of a foot regiment; but i have not space to describe all the party. they will re-appear in their proper places. we ate and drank, and were very merry, and sailed about all day, most of us hoping to meet again at cherbourg. -----------------------------------------------------------------------note. well we may say _tempera mutantus_. a pygmy ram would send her to the bottom in a few minutes.--editor. chapter seven. yacht squadrons on a cruise--o'wiggins's "popple"--arrival in cherbourg--the peace congress and the french channel fleet--lionising on shore--groggs lost--his first love--an irate parent. a crowd of yachts might have been seen one fine morning becalmed outside the needles. we were among them. we had sailed from cowes the previous evening, but had been unable to get further, from the light winds and calms which had prevailed. at last a breeze from the northward sprang up, and we went gayly along. it was a beautiful sight, and no one could fail to be in good spirits as we spoke the various vessels on board which we had acquaintances. the "popple" was among them, but having started first, was ahead till we came up with her, much to her owner's disgust. o'wiggins entertained the idea (very common not only to yachtsmen, but to masters of vessels and seaman in general, and a very happy one it is) that his vessel was the fastest, the most beautiful, and the best sea-boat going. "ah, hearty, old fellow, how are you?" he hailed. "you've brought a nice breeze with you. we haven't had a breath of it till this minute; we shall now stand on in company." as he spoke, we observed his master trimming sails with the greatest care, for he saw that we were already shooting past him at a great rate. we laughed, for we knew that the "popple" was a regular slow coach, as ugly as she was slow. she had once, i believe, been a cutter of the old build, with a high bow, and she was then lengthened, and had a new stern stuck on to her, and was rigged as a schooner. as a cutter she had been considered fast; but her new canvas was too much for her, and she could not manage to wag with it. her copper was painted of a bright red, and she had altogether a very peculiar and unmistakable appearance. we saw o'wiggins walking his deck with very impatient gestures as we shot past him. he could not make it out; something must be the matter with the "popple;" she was out of trim; it was the master's fault, but what was wrong was more than he could discover. his philosophy, if he had any, was sorely tried as yacht after yacht passed him, and more than all, when every one on board laughed at him. the fact was, that poor o'wiggins had done so many things to make himself ridiculous, that every one considered him a fair subject to exercise their merriment on. it was night before we made the lights on the french coast. first the barfleur lights and cape la hogue to the south were seen, then those of pilee and querqueville, and lastly the breakwater and harbour lights, and we soon after ran in by the south entrance, and anchored among the crowd of vessels of all sizes already in the harbour. one by one the yachts came, and last, though not least, the "popple" appeared, and brought up near us. o'wiggins instantly came on board to explain why the "popple" had not got in first; but all we could make out was, that she had not sailed as fast as she could because she had not. we did not go on shore that night. we had amusement enough, as we walked the deck with our cigars in our mouths, in watching the lights on shore and afloat, and the vessels as they came gliding noiselessly in, like dark spirits, and took up their berths wherever they could find room, and in listening to the hails from the ships-of-war, and those from the yachts' boats, as they pulled about trying to find their respective craft. we amused ourselves by marking the contrasts between the voices of the two nations--the sharp shrill cry of the french, and the deep bass of john bull. a good deal of sea tumbled into the bay during the night, in consequence of the fresh northerly breeze, and many an appetite was put _hors de combat_ in consequence. poor groggs, we heard him groaning as he lay in his berth, "oh, why was i tempted to cross the sea to come to this outlandish place, for the sake of watching a few french ships moving about, which, i dare say, after all don't differ much from as many english ones?" he exclaimed, between the paroxysms of his agony, "oh dear! oh dear! it's the last time i'll come yachting, that it is!" poor gregory!--he was not the only one ill that night, i take it; and i am sure hearty pardoned his not very grateful observations. we were early on deck, to inhale the fresh breeze, after the somewhat close air of the cabin; then indeed a splendid sight met our view. in the first place, floating in the bay were nine line-of-battle ships, in splendid fighting order, their dark batteries frowning down upon us; and, drawn up in another line, were a number of large war-steamers, besides many other steamers, both british and french; and lastly, and no unpleasing sight, there were some seventy or eighty yachts; it was impossible to count them--schooners, cutters, and yawls, besides some merchantmen and innumerable small craft of every description, all so mingled together that it appeared as if they would never get free of each other again. to the south was the town, with its masses of houses and churches, and its mercantile docks in front. on the west, the naval arsenal and docks, the pride of france and frenchmen, and which so many had come to see. on the other side were the shores of the harbour, stretching out to pilee island, and not far from the town a scarped hill looking down on it, with a fine view obtainable from the top, while to the north, outside all, was the famous digue, or breakwater, which the french assert eclipses that of plymouth, as the big sea-serpent does a common conger-eel. it was begun by louis fourteenth, and almost completed during the reign of louis philippe; during which period it was one night nearly washed away, while some hundred unfortunate workmen engaged on it were in the morning not to be found! but their place being supplied, the works were continued. the first day nothing of public importance took place. yachts came gliding in from all quarters, and steamers, if with less grace, at all events with more noise, bustle, and smoke, paddled up the harbour, with their cargoes of felicity-hunting human beings, very sick and very full of regrets at their folly at having left _terra firma_ to cross the unstable element. among other english craft, the "fun" came in with jack mizen and a large party on board. we quickly pulled alongside to welcome our friends. the ladies had proved better sailors than most of the gentlemen; and though good mrs mizen, the chaperone of the party, had been a little put out, and still looked rather yellow about the lower extremity of the face, the young ladies, who had been cruising all the summer, and tumbling about in all sorts of weather, had borne the passage remarkably well, and were as frisky and full of laughter as their dear sex are apt to be when they have every thing their own way. we, of course, as in duty bound, undertook to escort them on shore to show them the lions of the place. as the president was not expected till the evening, there was nothing particular to be done, so we had full time to walk about and to lionise to our heart's content. hearty took especial charge of laura mizen, while the owner of the "fun" kept fanny farlie under his arm, and looked unutterable things into her bonnet every now and then, while susan simms fell to my share; for porpoise made it a point of conscience, i believe, always to watch over the welfare of the chaperone. it was one of his many good points. remember, in forming a party of pleasure, never fail to secure a man who likes to make himself agreeable to the chaperone, or you will inevitably make some promising youth miserable, and bore the old lady into the bargain. groggs was the only man not paired. it was a pity the miss rullocks had not come; no blame to them, but their pa would not let them. mizen had brought no other gentlemen, as he had to give up all the after-part of his craft to his fair passengers, in order to make them comfortable. the two gigs carried the party properly apportioned between each, and in fine style we dashed up under the eyes of thousands of admiring spectators to the landing-place at the entrance of the inner basin, now filled with a number of yachts, which had got in there for shelter. the hotel was, of course, full; so the ladies resolved to live on board the yacht while they remained. our first visit was to the dockyard, through which we were conducted by a gendarme. we were particularly struck by the large proportion of anchors, of which, as mizen observed, he supposed there was a considerable expenditure in the french fleet. the vast inner basins, yet incomplete, look like huge pits, as if excavated to discover some hidden city. there are lines of heavy batteries seaward, which would doubtlessly much inconvenience an approaching fleet; but as their shot would not reach a blockading squadron, they could not prevent an enemy's fleet from shutting up theirs inside the breakwater, while it remained fine, supposing such a squadron ready to convoy over a fleet of troop-ships to the opposite shore; and were it to come on to blow, they might be welcome to put to sea as fast as they like, and a pleasant sail to them across channel. we went into a church where mass was being performed, and had to pay a sou each for our seats; the faithful who do not like paying must kneel on the ground, which is kept in the most holy state of filth, in order not to tempt them to economise. our next visit was to the museum. its attractions were not great, with the exception of some large pictures of naval combats, drawn by artists of merit, undoubted by the citizens of cherbourg, but who, nevertheless, had not read "james's naval history" to any good purpose; for, by some extraordinary oversight, the english were invariably getting tremendously thrashed (without their knowing it), and the french fleet were, with colours flying, proudly victorious. perhaps our histories differ; for certain battles, which we consider of importance, were not even in any way represented. trafalgar, st. vincent, the nile, were totally ignored. porpoise said that, to show his gratitude for the attention we received, he should present them with a correct painting of the first-named battle. "they'll alter the buntin', if you do, and hoist the french over the english," observed hearty. "though they may suspect that they cannot deceive the present generation, they hope to give their descendants an idea that they were everywhere victorious. they will boast of their glory, even at the risk of being convicted of fibbing by their posterity." "they know pretty well that the easy credulity of their countrymen will allow them to go any length, in direct opposition to truth, without fear of contradiction," replied porpoise. "why, the greater the scrape nap. or any of his generals got into, the more glowing and grandiloquent was their despatch. depend on it that humbug has vast influence in the world, and the french knowing it--small blame to them--they make use of it wherever it suits their purpose." after we had shown all the sights to be seen to our fair companions, we were walking through the somewhat crowded streets, on our return to the boats, when by some chance we got separated from each other. we, however, managed to find our way to the rendezvous, with the exception of groggs, who was not forthcoming. as he was guiltless of speaking a word of any other language than his mother-tongue, we could not leave him to find his way by himself on board, and accordingly porpoise and i, handing our charges into the boat, hurried off in search of him. we agreed not to be absent more than a quarter of an hour, and away we started, taking different routes among the crowds of women with high butterfly muslin caps, and bearded soldiers with worsted epaulettes, and sailors totally unlike english, notwithstanding all the pains they had taken to imitate them. we agreed that this dissimilarity arose much from the different mould in which the men are cast, and the utter impossibility of a french tailor cutting a seaman's jacket and trousers correctly. they all wore braces, and though they tried to swagger a little in imitation of the english seaman's roll, they had in appearance a very slight similarity to their intended originals. in despair of finding groggs among such a collection of idlers, i was wending my way back, when i was attracted by a crowd in front of the shop of a marchand d'eau de cologne, and above the din of shrill voices i heard one which, by its unmistakable accents, i recognised as that of our lost companion. at the same time, porpoise appearing some way up the street, i beckoned him towards me, and together we worked our way through the grinning crowd. in the shop was a damsel with considerable pretensions to beauty, before whom, on his knees, appeared groggs, fervently clasping her hand, while with no less fervour, and much more gesticulation, his hair was grasped by a little man, the father, we found, of the damsel, and whose dress and highly-curled locks at once betrayed the peruquier, or the hair-artist, as he would probably have styled himself. "but i tell you, old gentleman, my intentions are most honourable towards the lady!" exclaimed groggs, trying to save his head from being scalped entirely. "i tell you, sir, i have rarely seen so much beauty and excellence combined; and, if she is not displeased with my attentions, i don't see why you or any other man should interfere." "je suis son pere, je vous dis, et je ne permets pas de libertes avec ma fille!" cried the irate frenchman, giving another tug at his unlucky locks. groggs now caught sight of us, and appealed to us to save him. as we advanced, the young lady disengaged herself from his hand and ran behind the counter, the peruquier withdrew his clutches, and groggs rushed forward to meet us. the frenchman gazed at us with a fierce look of inquiry; but the uniform porpoise wore on the occasion, and my yachting costume, gained us some respect, i suppose. "what in the name of wonder is all this about?" i exclaimed, looking at groggs; and then turning to the frenchman i observed, in my best french and blandest tone, "that our arrival was fortunate, as i hoped instantly to appease his wrath, and put every thing on a pleasing footing." groggs then, in a few words, gave us his eventful history since he parted from us. he had been attracted by the words "eau de cologne" in the _affiche_ over the door, and being anxious to show how well he could make a purchase by himself, he had entered. instantly struck all of a heap (as he said) by the beauty and elegant costume of the lady, forgetting all about the eau de cologne, he endeavoured to address her. what was his delight to discover that she could speak some english! forgetful of the quick passing of time, he stayed on, till the father, hearing a stranger talking to his daughter in a tongue he could not understand, made his appearance. it was at the moment that groggs, grown bold, had seized her hand to vow eternal constancy. the lady was not unmoved, though somewhat amused, and not offended. it was probably not the first time her hand had been so taken, she nothing loath; of which fact her most respectable sire was doubtlessly cognisant. to pacify the irate barber, we interpreted the protestations of his honourable intentions which groggs was pouring out. the daughter, mademoiselle eulalie sophie de marabout, ably seconded our endeavours, by assuring her papa that the gentleman had behaved in the most respectful manner, nor uttered a word to offend her modest ears. at length we succeeded not only in appeasing the wrath of the _artiste_, but in propitiating him to such a degree that, assuring us that he felt convinced we were most honourable gentlemen, he invited us all to a _soiree_ in his rooms over the shop that evening. eulalie, with sweet smiles, seconded the invitation. groggs was delighted; and we, provided we could manage it, consented to avail ourselves of the respectable gentleman's kindness. we now hurried off groggs, for the ladies were all this time waiting in the boats; not before, however, he had whispered to eulalie that nothing should prevent him, at all events, from renewing the acquaintance thus somewhat inauspiciously begun. it was impossible to refrain from telling the story when we got on board; and had groggs's admiration for eulalie been proof against all the raillery and banter with which he was assailed, it would have been powerful indeed. the ladies did not openly allude to his adventure, but they said enough to show him that they knew all about it, as he could not help discovering from an occasional reference made to international matrimonial alliances, and the advantages to be derived from them. we returned on board just in time to get under way at a signal from our respective commodores, when the yachts of the various squadrons sailed in line outside the breakwater, under the command of the earl of wilton, who acted as admiral of the fleet. we formed in two columns, and performed a number of evolutions--we flattered ourselves, in the most creditable manner--and then we re-entered the harbour, and, running down the french line in gallant style, took up our stations again according to signal. our hearts swelled with pride, and we felt very grand indeed, only wishing that each of our little craft were seventy-four or one hundred and twenty gun ships, and that the french fleet were what they were. o'wiggins's yacht was the only one continually out of line, or somewhere where she ought not to have been. this was owing partly to his imagining that he knew more about the matter than the commodore or any one else, and partly to the bad sailing of his craft. mizen invited us four bachelors to spend the evening on board the "fun," and the attractions of our fair friends proved stronger than those held out by mademoiselle eulalie. there was an addition to our party in the person of o'wiggins, who invited himself on board, and served as an assistant laughing-stock to poor groggs. there was, consequently, a bond of union between the two--similar to that of two donkeys in a cart, both being lashed with the same whip. in the course of the evening o'wiggins heard of groggs's adventure, and, clapping him on his shoulder, assured him that he would take care it should not be his fault if he lost the lady. we had all day been waiting in expectation of the arrival of the president, every craft being decked out with flags, and every gun loaded to do him honour. at the hour he was expected, enthusiasm was at its height; but as time drew on, it waxed colder and colder. people had come from far and wide to see a sight which was not to be seen; they had expended their time and money, and had a right to complain. complain, therefore, they did, ashore and afloat; and had it at that time been put to the vote whether he should longer remain president, i fear he would instantly have been shorn of his honours. at last the bright luminary of day sank behind the dockyard, the commodores of the english craft fired the sunset gun, the flags were hauled down, and night came on. we had begun to fancy that the president's carriage must have broken down or been upset, or that he was not coming at all, when a gun was heard, and then another, followed by such a flashing and blazing and banging of artillery and muskets and crackers and rockets that we could have no doubt that the great man had indeed arrived. thus ended our first day at cherbourg. chapter eight. gay scene in cherbourg harbour--the o'wiggins again--aquatic visiting--a disciple of st. impudentia--how to banquet uninvited--the ball--visit of the president to the fleet--a few remarks on affairs in general. by the time the world was up and had breakfasted, on friday, the harbour of cherbourg presented a very gay appearance. the water was covered with hulls of vessels, and on the decks of the vessels were crowds of gay people, and above them a forest of tall masts, surmounted by flags innumerable, showing all the hues of the rainbow, while in every direction were dashing and splashing boats of every description, men-of-war's boats and shore-boats; and faster moving than all, yachts' boats, which, like comets, seemed to be flying about in eccentric orbits, without any particular reason, and for no definite purpose. o'wiggins made his appearance on board the "frolic," foaming with rage and indignation at not having been invited to the grand banquet to be given that day to the president. "neither have i, nor mizen, nor any other of the owners of yachts, except the commodores and a few noblemen." "faith, but that's no reason at all, at all, why i shouldn't!" exclaimed our hibernian friend, drawing himself up; "and, what's more, i intend to go, in spite of their neglect." we laughed, as usual, at his unexampled conceit; but fancying that he was joking, we thought no more about the matter. he soon took his departure, carrying off groggs, who had conceived a high respect for him. o'wiggins had promised to conduct him to the feet of the fair eulalie, which was an additional temptation to the poor man. never, perhaps, was there so much paying and receiving of visits as there was in the course of the day. the yachtsmen paid visits to each other, and then to the men-of-war; and to do the french officers justice, they treated us with the very greatest attention. i must say that all the french naval officers i have met are as gentlemanly a set of fellows as i know: they are highly scientific, and as brave as any men one could wish to meet. it appeared as if all the inhabitants and visitors of cherbourg were on the water also paying visits; and a report having got abroad that the owners of the english yachts were happy to show their vessels to all comers, we were all day long surrounded by visitors. the general joke was to send them all off to o'wiggins's craft, the "popple." her cabins were, certainly, very gaudily and attractively furnished. it was hinted to the townspeople that he was a very important person, and that he would be highly offended if his vessel was not the first honoured by their presence. o'wiggins was at first highly flattered with the attention paid him, and had actually prepared luncheon for the first-comers; but he soon discovered that he had more guests than he could accommodate, and in a little time he was almost overwhelmed with visitors, who, for hours after, crowded his cabins, without a possibility of his getting free of them. among others, while groggs was on board, came the fair eulalie and her respectable sire, habited in the costume of the national guard, and looking very military and dignified. groggs hurriedly advanced to receive the lovely maid; her surprise equalled his delight; when o'wiggins stepped out from an inner cabin. there was a mutual start and a look of recognition, and eulalie sank back, almost fainting, into the arms paternal, open to receive her, while, with a look which would have annihilated any man but o'wiggins, she exclaimed the single word, "_perfide_!" m. de marabout, with paternal solicitude, endeavoured to remove his daughter to the fresh air of the deck, but she recovered without that assistance, and exhibited signs unmistakable of a wish to abstract one or both of the eyes of the o'wiggins from his head. "what means all this, my dear sir?" inquired groggs, with a somewhat faltering voice, for suspicions most unpleasant were beginning to take possession of his imagination. "ask the lady," replied o'wiggins, looking out for a mode to secure his retreat. the lady saw that he was cowed, which, of course, gave her courage; so, releasing herself from her father, she sprang towards him. the skylight hatchway was the only available outlet; so he sprang on the table, and from thence was endeavouring to leap on deck, when she caught him by the leg. he struggled hard, for expose himself to her fury he dared not, and he did not like to summon his people to his assistance. at last he was obliged to do so; when as the seamen, with shouts of laughter, were hauling him up, off came his shoe and a piece of his trousers; and he was spirited away and stowed safely in the forepeak before the irate damsel could gain the deck, where she instantly hastened in the hopes of catching him. of the distracted and astounded groggs, eulalie took no further notice, and having in vain sought for the object of her fierce anger, whom she supposed to have escaped in a boat to the shore, she and her father and friends took their departure, and groggs saw his beloved no more. how o'wiggins had thus mortally offended the damsel remains a secret; for, communicative as he was on most subjects, he took very good care on this matter not to enlighten any of us. when o'wiggins discovered that eulalie was in reality gone, he retired to his cabin to compose himself, and to change his tattered garments for a magnificent uniform of some corps of fencibles, or militia, or yeomanry, of which he professed to be colonel; the said uniform being added to and improved according to his own taste and design, till it rivalled in magnificence that of a hungarian field-marshal, or a city lieutenant's. we had been giving the ladies a pull about the harbour, and were passing the "popple," when her owner made his appearance on deck. the previous account, it must be understood, we received afterwards from groggs, who recounted it with a simple pathos worthy of a despairing lover. on his head o'wiggins wore a huge cocked-hat, surmounted by a magnificent plume of feathers, which, waving in the wind, had a truly martial and imposing appearance, while the glittering bullion which profusely covered his dress could not fail of attracting the notice of all beholders. with the air of a monarch he stepped into his gig, which was alongside, manned by a grinning crew, and seizing the yoke-lines he directed her head up the harbour. he was too much engrossed by his own new-fledged dignity to observe us, so we followed him at a respectful distance, to watch his movements. the boats of all descriptions made way for him as he advanced, and the men-of-war's boats saluted, every one taking him for a foreign prince, or an ambassador, or a field-marshal, at least. at length he reached the quay, and with a truly princely air he stepped on shore, taking off his plumed hat, and bowing to the admiring and wondering crowds who stood there to welcome him. a space was instantly cleared to allow full scope for the wave of his cocked-hat, and as he advanced the crowd made way, bowing to him as he progressed. in execrable french he signified his wish to know the way to the mayor's hotel, where the banquet was to be held; and an officious official instantly thereon, perceiving the gestures of the great unknown, stepped forward, and profoundly bowing, advanced before him. "some dreadful mistake has doubtlessly occurred, and by an oversight which no one but i can remedy, no one has been deputed to conduct the prince to the banquet. for the honour of my country i'll tell a lie." so thought the patriotic official, as he observed, in an obsequious tone, "i have been deputed, mon prince, by monsieur the mayor, who deeply regrets that his multifarious duties prevent him from coming in person to conduct you to the banqueting-hall, where the great president of the great french republic will have the satisfaction of meeting you." "i am highly pleased at the mayor's attention," answered o'wiggins, with an additional flourish of his hat, and wondering all the time whom he could be taken for, that he might the better act his part. "a prince, at all events, i am, and that's something," he thought; so he walked on, smiling and bowing as before. of all nations in the world, the french are certainly the greatest admirers of a uniform, and the most easily humbugged by any one who will flatter their vanity; and certainly republicans are the greatest worshippers of titles. on walked the great o'wiggins, admired equally by the vieux moustache of the imperial guard, by the peasant-girl, with her high balloon starched cap, by the dapper grisette, by real soldiers of the line, by shopkeeping national guards, by citizen gentlemen and ladies in plain clothes, and the queer-shaped seamen and boatmen, of whom i have before spoken. his step was firm and confident as he approached the hall, and, as he got near, he saw with dismay that the guests arriving in crowds before him were admitted by tickets. this we also observed, and fully expected to have seen him turned back, shorn of his honours, amid the shouts of the populace. but the knowing doorkeeper, equally knowing as the officious official, who now, with a glance of pride, announced him, could not dream of insulting a prince by asking him for his ticket, and only bowed the lower as he advanced, he bestowing on them in return some of his most gracious nods. the act was accomplished. he was safe in the banqueting-hall; but still there might be a turn in the tide of his affairs; some one who knew him might possibly ask how he had managed to get there, and the mayor might request his absence. but o'wiggins was too true a disciple of st. impudentia thus to lose the ground he had gained. having begun with blusters and bold confidence, he now called in meek humility and modest bashfulness, with an abundant supply of blarney. stowing away his cocked-hat in a safe corner, he retired among a crowd of betinselled officials, and earnestly entered into conversation with them, expatiating largely on his satisfaction at the sight he had that day witnessed, assuring his hearers that in turkey, russia, or america, or any other of the many countries he had visited, he had never seen any thing to equal the magnificence he had beheld in this important part of _la belle_ france. he endeavoured also to bend down, so as to hide his diminished head among the crowd, and thus, as he had calculated, more wisely than a well-known wise man we have heard of, he passed undetected. dinner being announced as served, he found himself, much against his will, forced upwards close to the english naval officers and yacht commodores; but by a still further exertion of humility he contrived to take a seat a few persons off from those who knew him, and might put awkward questions. the french, however, could not fail to admire the admirable modesty of the foreign prince, and the liberals set it down to the score of his respect for republican institutions, while the royalists fancied that he was afraid of presuming on his rank before his republican host. from the information i could gain, and from his own account afterwards, his impudence carried him through the affair with flying colours, for no one detected him, though many wondered who he was; and even some who were acquainted with him by sight, failed to recognise the o'wiggins in the gayly-decked _militaire_ before them. having seen him enter the hall, we returned on board the "fun," to give an account of what had happened to our fair friends; and of course we did not fail of making a good story of the affair, and surmising that o'wiggins would be discovered and compelled to strip off his feathers. after dinner we prepared to go to the ball, to which the ladies wisely would not venture. poor groggs was very downcast at the events of the morning, and with the discovery that he could never hope to make the fair eulalie mrs groggs. as we were going on shore we met o'wiggins pulling off in his gig with four highly-bedecked officers of national guards, whom he had invited to visit the yacht. he had selected them for the gayness of their uniforms, which he fancied betokened their exalted rank. they had discovered that he was not a prince, but still were under the impression that he was at least a mi lord anglais, imbued with liberal principles. he nodded condescendingly to us as he passed. "i'm going to show my craft to these officers whom i brought from the banquet, and i'll be back soon at the ball," he exclaimed, with a look of triumph. it is understood--for i cannot vouch for the truth of the statement-that he made the officers very drunk, and then, changing his gay uniform for his usual yacht dress-coat, he made his appearance at the ball, where he boasted of the polite manner in which the president had asked him to the banquet, quoting all the speeches which had been made, and many other particulars, so that no one doubted that he was there. the ball-room was crowded to suffocation, and dancing was out of the question. i looked at the president with interest. the last time i had seen him was in a london ball-room, and at supper i had sat opposite to him and his cousin, the very image of their uncle. at that time, neither had more influence in the world than i or any other humble person. they were little lions, because they had the blood in their veins of the most extraordinary man our times has known; but any indian from the east, with a jewelled turban, created more interest. now i beheld the same man the head of a nation--the observed of all observers--dispensing his courtesies with a truly regal air. one could not help feeling that there must be more of his uncle's spirit in the man than one was before inclined to suppose. a considerable number of ladies' dresses and men's coats were torn, and purses and handkerchiefs abstracted from pockets, and the ball terminated. i have not given a very lucid description of it; but a crush in england is so very like a crush in france, that my readers who have endured one may easily picture the other. mrs mizen and her charges were anxious to sail to get back to plymouth for sunday, but we induced them to stop till the afternoon, by promising them to accompany them, that they might see the president visit the fleet, which it was understood he was to do on saturday. the day was lovely, and every craft afloat, from the big "valmy" to the smallest yacht, did her best to look gay, and to add to the brilliancy of the scene. the piers were crowded with people, and so were the decks of the vessels and boats and barges laden with passengers which were moving in every direction. it was amusing to watch the numerous parties on board the steamers at their meals: those forward indulging in bread and cheese and sausages, and vin ordinaire or beer; the more aristocratic aft in chicken-pies, hams, champagne, and claret, in which beverages they drank prosperity to the republic and long life to the president, though they would as readily have toasted a king or an emperor. it was a day of excitement. the first thing in the morning there was a pulling-match, but who was the winner i am unable to say. then the president paid a visit to the dockyard, and from that time every one was on the tiptoe of expectation to catch a glimpse of him as he pulled off to the ships-of-war he purposed visiting. at length he appeared in a state-barge of blue and white and gold, and prow and stern raised and carved richly, which floated as proudly as that of any lord mayor of london, from whittington downward; for not altogether dissimilar was she in appearance. she pulled twenty-four oars, and a captain stood by the coxswain to con her. under a canopy of purple cloth, the colour reminding one of imperial dignity, sat the president of the republic, a tricolour flag waving in the bow from a lofty flagstaff, speaking, however, loudly of republicanism. as his galley shot out of the dockyard, there burst forth from the mouth of every cannon on board the ships and in every fort on shore, roars most tremendous, flashes of flame, and clouds of smoke. never had i before heard such a wild, terrific uproar; crash followed crash, till it appeared that every soul afloat or on shore must be annihilated. thundering away went the guns, every ship firing every gun she had as fast as she could, and every fort doing the same. bang--crash, crash, crash. the ladies stopped their ears, and looked as if they wished themselves well out of it. it appeared as if a fierce battle were raging, while the ships and the batteries and the shore were shrouded by a dense mass of smoke. on a sudden the firing ceased, the smoke blew away, revealing once more the masts and rigging of the ships-of-war, now crowded with men in the act of laying out on the yards. the crews cheered, and the bands of all the ships struck up martial music, which floated joyfully over the water, and one could not help fancying that something very important was taking place. in reality, it was only a _coup d'etat_--prince napoleon was trying to supplant prince de joinville in the affections of the seamen of france. it is said that he made himself very popular, and gained golden opinions from all classes of men. his first visit was to the "friedland," the flag-ship of admiral deschenes, then to the "valmy," and next to "minerve," the gunnery-ship, on the same plan as our "excellent." here some practice took place, but i cannot say that the firing was any thing out of the way good. having inspected his own ships, he paid a visit to lord wilton's beautiful schooner, the "zarifa," and afterwards to the "enchantress," lord cardigan's yacht, both perfect vessels of their kind. we yachtsmen had, indeed, reason to feel not a little proud of the display made by our peaceable crafts on the occasion. we went on board several of the french ships, and were much struck with their beauty, cleanliness, and order, while every improvement which science has suggested has been introduced on board them. we were not particularly prepossessed in favour of the french seamen, either on shore or on board. there was a roughness in their manner which savoured somewhat of national dislike, fostered for sinister purposes, to be pleasant; or, if it was put on in imitation of the manners of our own honest jack tars, all i can say is, that it was a very bad imitation indeed, and about as unlike the truth as when they attempt to represent the english national character on the stage. from the french officers all who visited their ships received the very greatest attention and courtesy. we sailed that afternoon, as soon as the spectacle was over, in company with the "fun." i cannot, therefore, describe the ball, with its overpowering heat and crush, which took place that evening, nor the sham-fight, when the boats of the squadron attacked the steamer "descartes," nor the evolutions of the fleet, nor the awful expenditure of gunpowder from the ships, sufficient to make the economical hearts of the men of manchester sink dismayed within their bosoms. o friends! think you this expenditure of gunpowder and noise breathes the spirit of peace? o merchants, manufacturers, and calculators well versed in addition and subtraction, is it not worth while to employ some portion of our own income, even a large portion maybe, to insure old england against any freak our volatile neighbours may take into their heads? but i have done with public affairs. the "frolic" and the "fun" danced gayly together over the starlit ocean towards plymouth, wind and tide favouring us. the voices of our fair friends, as they sang in concert some delicious airs, sounded across the water most sweetly to our ears. what a contrast to the loud roar of the cannon in the morning, and the glare and bustle of cherbourg harbour, did that quiet evening present! we arrived safely in plymouth at an early hour next day. i am happy to say that, not long after, i received cards with silver ties from my friends mr and mrs jack mizen; but i am somewhat anticipating events. i think it right, however, to announce to the spinster world that groggs, porpoise, and bubble are still bachelors. chapter nine. preparations for a long cruise--hearty confesses to a soft impeachment-the o'wiggins and his passengers--how we got rid of them. hearty had long projected a voyage up the mediterranean, and invited carstairs, and bubble, and me to join him. groggs, as may be supposed, had become a bore, unbearable; and, as soon as we arrived at plymouth, had been sent back to cultivate his paternal acres and describe the wonders he had seen during his nautical career. while porpoise was attending to the refitting of the yacht, bubble and i were busily engaged in laying in stores of comestibles, and drinkables, and burnables and smokables, of all sorts. food for the mind, as well as for the body, was not forgotten; but hearty would not allow a pack of cards or dice on board. it was a fancy of his, he said, that he did not much mind being peculiar. "if a set of men with heads on their shoulders and brains in their heads cannot amuse themselves, unless by the aid of means invented for the use of idiots, and fit only for the half-witted, i would rather dispense with their society," he used to observe. we had, however, chess and draughts, though he was no great admirer of either game, especially of the latter. "however," as he said, "though those games kill time which i think it would be wise of men if they tried to keep alive, as they, at all events, won't let a fellow's mind go to sleep, we may as well have them." we exerted all our ingenuity and thought in laying in every thing which could possibly be required for a long voyage; and seldom has a yacht, i suspect, been better found in this respect. seldom, also, have five jolly bachelors been brought together more ready to enjoy themselves. three is generally considered the best number to form a travelling party, and certainly on shore no party should exceed that number, unless there is some stronger bond of union than mere pleasure or convenience. seldom when more men unite do they fail to separate before the end of the journey. for a yacht voyage, however, the case is different. in the first place, there is more discipline. the owner, if he is a man of judgment, assumes a certain amount of mild authority; acts as captain over every one on board, and keeps order. should a dispute arise, he instantly reconciles the disputants, and takes care himself never to dispute with any one. hearty was just the man for the occasion. "now, my dear fellows," said he to all the party on giving us the invitation, "the first thing we have to do is to sign articles to preserve good fellowship, and to do our best to make each other happy. i don't want to top the officer over my guests; but all i want you to promise me is, that if there arises any difference, you will allow me at once to be umpire. if i differ with any one, the rest must act the part of judge and jury." we, of course, were all too happy to agree to so reasonable a proposal, and so the matter was settled. with respect also to the numbers on board, in reality only hearty and carstairs were idlers; porpoise was officially master; bubble had originally fitted out the yacht, and acted as caterer; while i had undertaken to keep my watch, and aid will in his duties. we had with us guns and ammunition, and fishing-rods and nets, and camera-lucidas, and sketch-books; and musical instruments, flutes, a violin, a guitar, and accordion. we had even some scientific apparatus; nor had we forgotten a good supply of writing materials. the truth was that bubble and i had some claim to be authors. will had written a good deal: indeed, his prolific pen had often supplied him with the means of paying his tailor's bill; while i had more than once appeared in print. we agreed, therefore, not to interfere with one another in our literary compositions. while he took one department, i was to take the other. at last we were all ready for sea. mizen came out in the "fun" to see us off, with fanny farlie, miss mizen, mr and mrs rullock, and susan simms on board, as well as several of our friends, and we struck up, as the yachts at length parted, with our voices and all the musical instruments we could bring into action, "the girls we leave behind us." hearty heaved a sigh as he was looking through his glass at the fast-receding "fun." "what's the matter?" i asked. "yes, she is a sweet girl!" he ejaculated, not answering me, however. i spoke again. "laura mizen, to be sure," he replied. "who else? she's unlike all the rest of our yachting set away at ryde there. they are all young ladies, cast in the same mould, differing only in paint, outside show; one may be blue and the other red, another yellow, though i don't think you often find them of any primitive colour; generally they are of secondary, or mixed colours, as the artists say. one again wishes to be thought fast, and another sentimental, another philanthropic or religious, and another literary. i don't know which of the pretenders i dislike the most. the fast young ladies are the most difficult to deal with. they do such impudent things, both to one and of one. if they knew how some of the fast men speak of them in return, it would make them wince not a little, i suspect, if they have not rattled away from all delicacy themselves. oh, give me a right honest, good girl, who does not dream of being any thing but herself; who is a dutiful daughter, and is ready to be a loving, obedient wife of an honest man, and the affectionate mother of some fine hearty children, whom she may bring up with a knowledge of the object for which they were sent into the world." "well said, my dear fellow," i answered, warmly; for i seriously responded to his sentiments, though, it must be confessed, they were very different to the style which had been usual on board the "frolic." "why did you not ask her, though?" i continued. "because i was a fool," he answered. "those rattler girls, masons and sandons, and that miss mary masthead, and others of her stamp, were running in my head, and i couldn't believe that laura mizen was in reality superior to them. i used to talk the same nonsense to her that i rattled into their willing ears; and it is only now that i have thought over the replies she made, and many things she lately said to me, and that i have discovered the vast difference there is between her and the rest." "well, 'bout ship, and propose," said i; "though sorry to lose the cruise, your happiness shall be the first consideration." "oh, no, no! that will never do," he answered. "i doubt if she will have me now. when we come back next summer i will find her out, and if she appears to receive me favourably, i will propose. now she thinks me only a harum-scarum rattler. it would never do." i could say nothing to this. i truly believed that though hearty's fortune would weigh with most girls, it would but little with her; and i could only hope that in the mean time she would not bestow her affections on any one else. just as we got outside the breakwater we sighted a schooner, standing in for the sound, which we had no difficulty in making out to be the "popple." as soon as she discovered us, she bore down on us, signalising away as rapidly as possible. "what are they saying?" asked hearty, as he saw the bunting run up to her masthead. "heave-to, i want to speak to you," i answered, turning over the leaves of the signal-book. "shall we?" asked porpoise. "oh, by all means," replied hearty. "o'wiggins may have something of importance to communicate." "down with the helm; let fly the jib-sheet; haul the foresail to windward," sung out porpoise, and the cutter lay bobbing her head gracefully to the sea, while the schooner approached her. still they continued running up and down the bunting on board the "popple." i had some difficulty in making out what they intended to say. "ladies aboard--trust to gallantry," i continued to interpret, as i made out the words by reference to the book. "what can they wish to say?" exclaimed hearty. "they wish to lay an embargo on us of some sort, and begin by complimenting us on our gallantry," observed bubble. "by the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes," exclaimed carstairs. "as i am a living gentleman, there are petticoats on board. who has been acting the part of a perfidious wretch, and breaking tender vows? an avenging nemesis is in his wake in the person of mrs skyscraper, or the rattler girls, or mary masthead. even at this distance i can make them out." so it was, as the schooner approached, the very dames carstairs had named were seen on board. we had observed, as we went down the sound, a large schooner beating up from the westward. there had been discussions as to what she was. our glasses had now once more been turned towards her, when we discovered her to be the "sea eagle." seeing our bunting going up and down so rapidly, sir charles drummore, her owner, curious to know what we were talking about, stood towards us. the "popple" hove-to to windward of us, and a boat being lowered, o'wiggins pulled on board. "my dear fellow, i'm so glad we've overtaken you," he began. "your friend, mrs skyscraper, and those young ladies with her, were so anxious to have another cruise on board the `frolic' before the summer is over, that i consented to bring them down here, as i made sure that you would be delighted to see them!" never did hearty's face assume a more puzzled and vexed expression. "heaven defend me from them!" he exclaimed. "tell them that we've got the yellow-fever--or the plague, or the cholera, or the measles, or the whooping-cough, or any thing dreadful you can think of; make every excuse--or no excuse; the thing is impossible, not to be thought of for a moment: they can't come. we are bound foreign, say to the north pole, or the west indies, or the coast of africa, or the south pacific, or to the antipodes. they don't want to go there, at all events, i suppose." "but if you don't take them, what am i to do with them?" exclaimed o'wiggins. "i'm bound down channel, and if they don't worry me out of house and home, they'll drive me overboard with the very clatter of their tongues." a bright thought struck hearty. just then the "sea eagle" came up, and hove-to on our quarter. "much obliged to you for your kind intentions towards us, but, instead, just hand them over to drummore," said he, rubbing his hands. "if any man can manage so delicate an affair, you can, o'wiggins, without wishing to pay you an undue compliment." sir charles drummore was a baronet, one of our yachting acquaintances, and had lately purchased the "sea eagle." a worthy old fellow, though he had the character of being somewhat of a busybody. he certainly looked more in his place in his club than on board his yacht. "well, i'll try it," answered the o'wiggins, who was himself easily won by the very bait he offered so liberally to others. "trust me, i'll do it if mortal man can. i'll weave a piteous tale of peerless damsels in distress, and all that sort of thing. thank you for the hint; it will take, depend on it." "well, be quick about it," we exclaimed, "or drummore will be topping his boom, and you will miss your chance." thereon o'wiggins tumbled into his boat, and pulled aboard the "sea eagle." what story he told-what arguments he used--we never heard; but very shortly we had the satisfaction of seeing the misses rattler and mary masthead, with their skittish chaperone, mrs skyscraper, transferred to the deck of the "sea eagle." we strongly suspected that the prim baronet had not the slightest conception as to who formed the component parts of the company with whom he was to be favoured. he bowed rather stiffly as he received them and their bandboxes on deck; but he was in for it; his gallantry would not allow him to send them back to the "popple," and he had, therefore, only to wish sincerely for a fair breeze, that he might land them as speedily as possible at ryde. the o'wiggins waved his cap with an extra amount of vehemence, and putting up his helm, and easing off his sheets, stood away for falmouth. we, at the same time, shaped a course down channel, mightily glad that we were free of all fast young ladies and flirting widows. "o'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, survey our empire, and behold our home!" spouted carstairs, pointing to the wide atlantic which rolled before us. "the sea, the sea, the open sea!- the wide, the blue, the ever free; without a mark, without a bound, it runneth the earth's wide region round! i'm on the sea- i am where i would ever be: with the blue above, and the blue below, and silence wheresoe'er i go," chimed in hearty, whose quotations and sketches were always from authors of more modern date. "you'll sing different songs to those, gentlemen, if it comes on to blow a gale of wind while we are crossing the bay," said porpoise, laughing. "the sea always puts me in mind of a woman, very delightful when she's calm and smiling, but very much the contrary when a gale is blowing. i've knocked about all my life at sea, and have got pretty tired of storms, which i don't like a bit better than when i first went afloat." "never fear for us," answered hearty. "i never was in a storm in my life, and i want to see how the `frolic' will behave." "as to that, i dare say she will behave well enough," said porpoise. "there's no craft like a cutter for lying-to, or for beating off a lee-shore; or working through a narrow channel, for that matter, though a man-of-war's man says it. we have the credit of preferring our own square-rigged vessels to all others, and not knowing how to handle a fore-and-after." "come what may, we'll trust to you to do the best which can be done under any chances which may occur," said hearty. "and now here comes ladle to summon us to dinner." to dinner we went, and a good one we ate, and many a good one after it. many a joke was uttered, many a story told, and many a song was sung. in truth, the days slipped away more rapidly even than on shore. "well, after all, i can't say that there is much romance in a sea-life," exclaimed carstairs, stretching out his legs, as he leaned back in an arm-chair on deck, and allowed the smoke of his fragrant havana to rise curling over his upturned countenance, for there was very little wind at the time, and from what there was we were running away. "i can't quite agree with you on that point: there is romance enough at sea, as well as everywhere else, if people only know how to look for it," observed will bubble, who had been scribbling away most assiduously all the morning in a large note-book which he kept carefully closed from vulgar eyes! "oh, i know, of course, `books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing,'" answered carstairs, who was seldom at a loss for a quotation from shakespeare. "but i mean, who ever meets a good, exciting, romantic adventure with pirate-smugglers, savages, or some thing of that sort? perhaps you, bubble, have got something of that sort in your book there which you will give us, but then it will be only fiction: i want a stern reality. the world has grown too matter-of-fact to keep a fellow awake." "i'll own to the soft impeachment," answered bubble, laughing. "but my story's real; i've been merely putting some notes into form for our amusement, and i hope all hands will be duly grateful." we all thanked bubble for his promise. "i cannot agree with you, in any way, as to there being no romance in a sea-life," said i. "only last year i took part in a very pretty little bit of romance, which would have made the fortune of any paper into which it had been allowed to find its way; but for the sake of the actors we kept the affair a profound secret, or you would certainly have heard of it." "let's have it all out now," exclaimed hearty; "we won't peach: we'll be as tight as the `frolic' herself." "i wouldn't trust you in the club," said i. "but, out here, i don't think it will go beyond the bulwarks, so you shall hear my story." while the rest of our party sat round, and drew, or netted, or smoked, i gave an account of the incident to which i alluded. as it is an important introduction to our subsequent adventures, it is, i feel, well worthy of a chapter to itself. chapter ten. why a bachelor took to yachting--the rival suitors--a doubtful character. awakened one morning towards the close of the last london season by the postman's rap, my friend harcourt found, on reading his letters, that he had become the owner of the "amethyst" cutter, and a member of the royal yacht club. possessing an independent fortune, a large circle of acquaintance, several stanch friends, and few enemies, he ought to have been a happy man--but he was not. the fact is, he did not know what to do with himself. he had travelled not only over the continent, but had visited the three other quarters of the globe. he had gone through several london seasons, and run the rounds of innumerable country-houses where there were marriageable daughters, but had neither fallen in love, nor been drawn into a proposal. in truth, he believed with his friends that he was not a marrying man. he had become heartily sick of dusty roads, passage-steamers, hot rooms, dissipation, and manoeuvring mammas, when i, who had of old been his messmate, recommended him to try yachting for the summer. "what, go to sea for pleasure?" he exclaimed, in a tone of contempt. "you surely cannot suggest such a folly. i had enough of it when i was a poor young middy, and obliged to buffet the rude winds and waves; but--" "well; think about it," were the last words i uttered as i left him. he _did_ think about it, and thought, too, perhaps, he might like it. he was not a novice, for he had for some years of his existence served his country in the exalted capacity of a midshipman; but on succeeding, by the death of an elder brother and an uncle, to some few thousands a year, he magnanimously determined, by the advice of his lady mother, not to stand in the way of the promotion of any of his brother-officers, and retired from the career of glory he was following. i cannot say that the thoughts of leaving his profession gave him much regret, particularly as being too old to return to school, and too ignorant of latin and greek to think of the university, he was henceforth to be his own master. if now and then he acknowledged to himself that he might have been a happier man with a pursuit in life, i cannot say--i am not moralising. so much for his past life. after i left him he meditated on the subject i had suggested, he told me; and the next time we met, we talked it over, and as i was going down to portsmouth, he gave me _carte blanche_ to buy a vessel for him, there not being time to build one. this letter communicated the result of my search. having made himself master of this and a few other bits of information, he turned round, as was his custom after reading his letters, to sleep off the weariness of body and mind with which he had lately been afflicted, but as he lay dozing on his luxurious couch, visions of the "amethyst," flitted across his brain. a light, graceful craft, as she probably was, with a broad spread of white canvas, gliding like some lovely spirit over the blue ocean. "who shall sail with me," he thought. "brine, of course. where shall we go? when shall we start? what adventures shall we probably encounter? how shall i again like to find myself on the surface of the fickle sea?" the case, however, from the then and the now was widely different. then he was a midshipman in a cockpit, at the beck and order of a dozen or twenty masters. now he was to enjoy a command independent of the admiralty and their sealed orders, admirals, or senior captains. his own will, and the winds and tides, the only powers he was to obey. "by jove! there is something worth living for," he exclaimed, as he jumped out of bed. "i'll forswear london forthwith. i'll hurry off from its scheming and heartlessness, its emptiness and frivolity. i'll go afloat at once. brine is right. he's a capital fellow. it was a bright idea. i'll try first how i like channel cruising. i can always come on shore if it bores me. if i find it pleasant, i'll buy a larger craft next year. i'll go up the straits, perhaps out to visit my friend brooke at borneo, and round the world." he bathed, breakfasted, drove to his tailor's, looked in at the carlton and the conservative, fulfilled a dinner engagement, and in the evening went to three parties, at all of which places he astonished his acquaintances by the exuberance of his spirits. "the fact is," he answered to their inquiries as by what wonderful means the sudden change had been wrought, "i've broken my trammels. i'm off. a few days hence and london shall know me no more. to be plain, i'm going to turn marine monster, don a monkey-jacket, cultivate a beard, wear a tarpaulin hat, smoke cigars, and put my hands in my pockets. we shall meet again at cowes, torquay, plymouth, or one of the other salt water places. till then, _au revoir_." as he was entering lady l--'s door, who should he meet coming out but his old friend o'malley, whom he had not seen for ages! he knew that his regiment had just come back from india, so he was not very much surprised. he took his arm and returned into the rooms with him. now, o'malley was an excellent fellow, agreeable, accomplished, and possessed of a fund of good spirits, which nothing could ruffle. he was, indeed, a good specimen of an irish gentleman. he sang a good song, told a good story, and made friends wherever he went. such was just the man under every circumstance for a _compagnon de voyage_. he hesitated not a moment in inviting him, and, to his infinite satisfaction, he at once accepted the offer. a week after he had become the owner of the "amethyst," o'malley and he were seated in a southampton railroad carriage, on their way to cowes, where she was fitting out under my inspection. in the division opposite to them sat a little man whom they at once perceived to belong to the genus snob. he had a comical little face of his own, lighted by a pair of round eyes, with a meaningless expression, fat cheeks, a somewhat large open mouth, and a pug nose with large nostrils. "beg pardon, sir," he observed to o'malley, on whose countenance he saw a smile playing, which encouraged him. "hope i don't interrupt the perusal of your paper? ah, no--concluded--topped off with births, deaths, marriages, and advertisements. see mine there soon. don't mean an advertisement, nor my birth, ha, ha! too old a bird for that; nor death, you may suppose; i mean t'other--eh, you twig? coming the tender, wooing, and wedding--hope soon to fix the day:"--suddenly he turned round to harcourt--"reading the `daily'?--ah, no, the `times,' i see.-any news, sir?" they did look at him with astonishment, but, at the same time, were so amused that, of course, they humoured the little man. harcourt, therefore, unfroze, and smiling, offered him the paper. "oh dear! many thanks, didn't want it," he answered; "can't read in a railroad, afraid to interrupt you before you'd finished. going down to the sea, i suppose?--so am i. abroad, perhaps?--i'm not. got a yacht?--national amusement. sail about the wight?--pretty scenery, smooth water, i'm told. young lady, fond of boating--sure way to win her heart. come it strong--squeeze her hand, can't get away. eh, see i'm up to a trick or two." in this absurdly vulgar style he ran on, while they stared, wondering who he could be. finding that, they said nothing, he began again. "fond of yachting, gentlemen?" "i believe so," answered harcourt. "so am i.--got a yacht?" he asked. harcourt nodded. "what's her name?" harcourt told him. "mine's the `dido.' pretty name, isn't it? short and sweet. dido was queen of sheba, you know--ran away with ulysses, the trojan hero, and then killed herself with an adder because he wouldn't marry her. learned all that when i was at school. she's at southampton, but i belong to the club. only twenty-five tons--little, but good. not a clipper i own--stanch and steady, that's my motto. warwick ribbons has always a welcome for his friends. that's me, at your service. christened warwick from the great guy. rough it now and then. you won't mind that. eggs and bacon, and a plain chop, but weeds and liquor _ad lib_. brother yachtsmen, you know. bond of union." they winced a little. "shall meet often, i hope, as my father used to say each time he passed the bottle. david ribbons was his name. good man. merchant in the city. cut up well. left me and brother barnabas a mint of money. barnabas sticks to trade. i've cut it. made a lucky spec, in railroads, and am flaring up a bit. here we are at the end of our journey," he exclaimed, as the train stopped at southampton. "we shall meet again on board the `dido.' remember me. warwick ribbons, you know--good-by good-by." and before they were aware of his friendly intentions, he had grasped them both warmly by the hand. "i must see after my goods--my trunks, i mean." so saying, he set off to overtake the porter, who was wheeling away his traps. harcourt never felt more inclined to give way to a hearty fit of laughter, and o'malley indulged himself to his heart's content. in an hour after this they were steaming down the southampton water on their way to cowes. just as they got clear of the pier they again beheld their friend, warwick ribbons, on the deck of a remarkably ugly little red-bottomed cutter, which they had no doubt was the "dido." he recognised them, apparently, for, holding on by the rigging, he jumped on the gunwale, waving his hat vehemently to draw their attention and that of the other passengers to himself and his craft, but of course they did not consider it necessary to acknowledge his salute. this vexed him, for he turned round and kicked a dirty-looking boy, which also served to let everybody know that he was master of the "dido." the boy uttered a howl and ran forward, little ribbons followed him round and round the deck, repeating the dose as long as they could see him. i was the first person they met on landing at cowes, and harcourt, having introduced o'malley to me, we repaired to the "amethyst," lying off white's yard. we pulled round her twice, to examine her thoroughly before we went on board. he was not disappointed in her, for though smaller than he could have wished--she measured sixty tons--she was a perfect model of symmetry and beauty. she was also so well fitted within that she had accommodation equal to many vessels of nearly twice her size. three days more passed, and the "amethyst" was stored, provisioned, and reported ready for sea. harcourt's spirits rose to an elevation he had not experienced for years, as, on one of the most beautiful mornings of that beautiful season, his craft, with a light wind from the southward, glided out of cowes harbour. "what a wonderful effect has the pure fresh air, after the smoke and heat of london!" exclaimed o'malley. "let me once inhale the real salt breeze, and i shall commit a thousand unthought-of vagaries, and so will you, let me tell you; you'll be no more like yourself, the man about town, than the `amethyst' to a coal-barge, or choose any other simile you may prefer." we had now got clear of the harbour, so i ordered the vessel to be hove-to, that, consulting the winds and tides, we might determine the best course to take. "where shall we go, then?" asked harcourt. "the flood has just done. see, that american ship has begun to swing, so we have the whole ebb to get to the westward." "we'll take a short trip to spread our wings and try their strength," i answered. "what say you to a run through the needles down to weymouth? we shall be back in time for dinner to-morrow." we all three had an engagement for the next day to dine with harcourt's friends, the granvilles, one of the few families of his acquaintance who had yet come down. "as you like it; but hang these dinner engagements in the yachting season," exclaimed o'malley. "i hope you put in a proviso that, should the winds drive us, we were at liberty to run over to cherbourg, or down to plymouth, or do as we pleased." "no," he answered; "the fact is, i scarcely thought the vessel would be ready so soon, and we are bound to do our best to return." "and i see no great hardship in being obliged to eat a good dinner in the company of such nice girls as the miss granvilles seem to be," i put in. "well, then, that's settled," harcourt exclaimed. "we've no time to lose, however, though we have a soldier's wind. up with the helm--let draw the foresail--keep her away, griffiths." and the sails of the little craft filling, she glided gracefully through the water, shooting past egypt point, notwithstanding the light air, at the rate of some six knots an hour. gradually as the sun rose the breeze freshened. gracefully she heeled over to it. the water bubbled and hissed round her bows, and faster and faster she walked along. "she's got it in her, sir, depend on't," said griffiths, as he eyed the gaff-topsail with a knowing look. "there won't be many who can catch her, i'll answer. i was speaking yesterday to my brother-in-law, whose cousin was her master last summer, from the time she was launched, and he gave her a first-rate character--such a sea-boat, sir, as weatherly and dry as a duck. they were one whole day hove-to in the chops of the channel without shipping a drop of water, while a big ship, beating up past them, had her decks washed fore and aft." griffiths' satisfactory praise of the craft was cut short by the announcement of breakfast, and, with keen appetites, we descended to discuss as luxurious a meal as three bachelors ever sat down to. tea, coffee, chocolate, hot rolls, eggs, pickled salmon, lamb chops, kaplines, and orange marmalade, were some of the ingredients. then came some capital cigars, on which harcourt and o'malley had chosen a committee of connoisseurs at the garrick to sit before they selected them. "we bachelors lead a merry life, and few that are married lead better," sang o'malley, as he lighted his first havana. "on my word you're right," chimed in harcourt. "now i should like any one to point me out three more happy fellows than we are and ought to be. what folly it would be for either of us to think of turning benedict!" "faith, an officer in a marching regiment, with only his pay to live on had better not bring his thoughts into practice, at all events," observed o'malley. "such has been the conclusion to which i have always arrived after having fallen in love with half the lovely girls i have met in my life; and, as ill luck would have it, somehow or other if they have been heiresses, i could not help thinking that it might be their money which attracted me more than their pretty selves, and i have invariably run off without proposing. i once actually went down to marry a girl with a large fortune, whose friends said she was dying for me, but unfortunately she had a pretty little cousin staying with her, a perfect hebe in form and face, and, on my life, i could not help making love to her instead of the right lady, who, of course, discarded me, as i deserved, on the spot." as we opened scratchell's bay to the south of the needles, o'malley, who had never been there before, was delighted with the view. "the pointed chalk rocks of the needles running like a broken wall into the sea, the lofty white cliff presenting a daring front to the storms of the west, the protector, as it were, of the soft and fertile lands within; the smooth downs above, with their watchful lighthouse, the party-coloured cliffs of alum bay, and hurst castle and its attendant towers, invading the waters at the end of the yellow sandbank. come, that description will do for the next tourist who wanders this way," he exclaimed. "ah, now we are really at sea," he continued; "don't you discover the difference of the land wind and the cool, salt, exhilarating breeze which has just filled our sails, both by feel, taste, smell? at last i begin to get rid of the fogs of london which have hitherto been hanging about me." as the sun rose the wind freshened, and we had a beautiful run to weymouth. we brought up in the bay near a fine cutter, which we remarked particularly, as there were very few other yachts there at the time. manning the gig, we pulled on shore to pass away the time till dinner, and as none of us had ever been there before, we took a turn to the end of the esplanade to view that once favourite residence of royalty. as we were walking back we met a man in yachting costume, who, looking hard at o'malley, came up and shook him warmly by the hand. i also knew his face, but could not recollect where i had seen him, and so it appeared had harcourt. slipping his arm through that of o'malley, who introduced him as mr miles sandgate, he turned back with us. he seemed a jovial, hail-fellow-well-met sort of character, not refined, but very amusing; so, without further thought, as we were about to embark, harcourt asked him on board to dine with us. he at once accepted the invitation, and as we passed the yacht we had admired, we found that she belonged to him. i remarked that she had no yacht burgee flying, and he did not speak of belonging to any club. he might, to be sure, have lately bought her, and not had time to be elected. but then, again, he had evidently been constantly at sea, and was, as far as i had an opportunity of judging, a very good seaman. the dinner passed off very pleasantly. harcourt's cook proved that he was a first-rate nautical _chef_. our new acquaintance made himself highly amusing by his anecdotes of various people, and his adventures by sea and land in every part of the globe. there was, however, a recklessness in his manner, and at times a certain assumption and bravado, which i did not altogether like. after we had despatched our coffee, and a number of cigars, he took his leave, inviting us on board the "rover," the name of his yacht; but we declined, on the plea of wishing to get under way again that evening. in fact, we had agreed to return at once to cowes to be in time for our dinner at the granvilles'. "oh, then you must breakfast with me to-morrow morning, for i am bound for the same place, and shall keep you company," he observed, with a laugh; "though i have no doubt that the `amethyst' is a fast craft, yet i am so much larger that you must not be offended at my considering it probable that i shall be able to keep up with you." on this harcourt could not, in compliment to o'malley, help asking him to remain longer with us, and he sending a message on board his vessel, both yachts got under way together. perhaps he perceived a certain want of cordiality in harcourt's manner towards him, as he was evidently a keen observer of other men; for at all events he did his utmost to ingratiate himself with him, and during the second half of his stay on board he had entirely got rid of the manner which annoyed him, appearing completely a man of the world, well read, and conversant with good society. at the same time he did not hint to what profession he had belonged, nor what had taken him to the different places of which he spoke. in fact, we could not help feeling that there was a certain mystery about him which he did not choose to disclose. at a late hour he hailed his own vessel, and his boat took him on board her. the wind was so light, that, till the tide turned to the eastward, we made but little progress; but the moon was up, and the air soft and balmy, and most unwillingly we turned in before we got through the needles. as soon as our visitor had left us, o'malley told us that he had met him many years before in india, at the house of a relation, he believed, of sandgate's; that this relation had nursed him most kindly through a severe illness with which he had been attacked, and that he had, on his recovery, travelled with sandgate through the country. he met him once or twice after that, and he then disappeared from india, nor had he seen him again, till he encountered him in london soon after his return. he believed that he had been connected with the opium trade, and suspected that he had actually commanded an opium clipper in his more youthful days, though he fancied he had engaged in the pursuit for the sake of the excitement and danger it afforded, as he appeared superior to the general run of men employed in it. the next morning, the tide having made against us, we brought up off yarmouth, when we went on board the "rover," to breakfast, and a very sumptuous entertainment mr sandgate gave us, with some cigars, which beat any thing i had ever tasted. the cabin we went into was handsomely fitted up; but he did not go through the usual ceremony of showing us over the vessel. it was late in the afternoon when the two vessels anchored in cowes harbour. soon after we brought up we saw the "dido" come into the harbour, and just as we were going on shore, mr ribbons himself, in full nautical costume, pulled alongside. he insisted on coming on board, and taxed harcourt's hospitality considerably before we could get rid of him. hearing me mention the granvilles, he very coolly asked us to introduce him. "why, you see," he added, "there's an acquaintance of mine, i find, staying with them whom i should like to meet." we all, of course, positively declined the honour he intended us. "probably if you send a note to your friend he may do as you wish," i observed. "i am not on sufficiently intimate terms with the family." "oh! why you see it's a lady--a young lady, you know--and i can't exactly ask her." "i regret, but it is impossible, my dear sir," i answered. "you must excuse us, or we shall be late for dinner;" and leaving him biting his thumbs with doubt and vexation, we pulled on shore. the party at the granvilles' was excessively pleasant. the miss granvilles were pretty, nice girls, and they had a friend staying with them, who struck me as being one of the most lovely creatures i had ever seen. she had dark hair and eyes, with an alabaster complexion, a figure slight and elegant, and features purely classical; the expression of her countenance was intelligent and sweet in the extreme, but a shade of melancholy occasionally passed over it, which she in vain endeavoured to conceal. harcourt at once became deeply interested in her, though he could learn little more about her than that her name was emily manners, and that she was staying with some friends at ryde, the bosleys, he understood. who they were he could not tell, for he had never heard their names before. she sang very delightfully; and some more people coming in, we even accomplished a polka. during the evening, while he was speaking to her, he overheard o'malley, in his usually amusing way, describing our rencontre with mr warwick ribbons, and he was surprised, when she heard his name, to see her start and look evidently annoyed, though she afterwards could not help smiling as he continued drawing his picture. "and, do you know, miss granville," he added, "he wanted us to bring him here, declaring that some mutual and very dear friend of his and yours was staying, with you." "absurd! who can the man be?" said miss granville. "miss manners is the only friend staying with us, and i am sure she cannot know such a person, if your description of him is correct. do you, emily, dear?" to my astonishment, miss manners blushed, and answered, "i am acquainted with a mr ribbons; that is to say, he is a friend of mr bosley's; but i must disclaim any intimacy with him, and i trust that he did not assume otherwise." o'malley saw that he had made a mistake, and with good tact took pains to show that he fully believed little ribbons had imposed on us, before he quietly dropped the subject, and branched off into some other amusing story. the granvilles and their fair friend promised to take a cruise in the "amethyst" on the following day, but as the weather proved not very favourable, harcourt put off their visit till the day after. he thus also gained an excuse for passing a greater part of it in their society. as we walked down to the esplanade in front of the club-house to look at the yacht, which they had expressed a wish to see, we encountered no less a person than warwick ribbons himself. he passed us several times without venturing to speak; but at last, mustering courage, he walked up to miss manners and addressed her-"good morning, miss emily. happy to see you here. couldn't tell where you'd run to, till old bosley told me. been looking for you in every place along the coast. venture back to ryde in the `dido'? come, now, you never yet have been on board, and i got her on purpose"--he was, i verily believe, going to say "for you," but he lost confidence, and finished with a smirking giggle--"to take young ladies out, you know." harcourt felt inclined to throw the little abomination into the water. "thank you," said miss manners; "i prefer returning by the steamer." "oh, dear, now that is--but i'm going to see your guardian, miss, and may i take a letter to him just to say you're well?" asked mr ribbons; "he'll not be pleased if i don't." "i prefer writing by the post," answered emily, now really becoming annoyed at his pertinacity. "you won't come and take a sail with me, then?" he continued; "you and your friends, i mean." she shook her head and bowed. "well, then, if you won't, i'm off," he exclaimed, with a look of reproach, and, striking his forehead, he turned round and tumbled into his boat. we watched him on board his vessel, and the first thing he did was to set to and beat his boy; he then dived down below and returned with a swimming belt, or rather jacket, on, which he immediately began to fill with air, till he looked like a balloon or a chinese tumbler. the "dido," then got under way; but her crew were apparently drunk, for she first very nearly ran right on to the quay, and then foul of a boat which was conveying a band of musicians across the river. a most amusing scene ensued, ribbons abused the musicians, who had nothing at all to do with it, and they retorted on him, trying to fend off the vessel with their trombones, trumpets, and cornopeans. at one time they seemed inclined to jump on board and take forcible possession of the "dido," but they thought better of it, and when they got clear they put forth such a discordant blast of derision, finishing like a peal of laughter, that all the spectators on shore could not help joining them, and i wonder the little man ever had courage again to set his foot in cowes. we were still on the quay when sandgate came on shore and passed us; as he did so, he nodded to us, and i observed him looking very hard at miss manners. he soon after, without much ceremony, joined us, and managed quietly to enter into conversation with all the ladies. after some time, however, i perceived that he devoted his attention almost exclusively to emily. he was just the sort of fellow to attract many women, and i suspect that harcourt felt a twinge of jealousy attacking him, and regretted that o'malley had ever introduced him; at the same time i trusted that emily would perceive that want of innate refinement which i had discovered at once; but then, i thought, women have have not the same means of judging of men which men have of each other. he did not, however, speak of his vessel, nor offer to take out any of the party. i shall pass over the next two or three days which we spent in the neighbourhood, each day taking the granvilles and their friends on the water; and so agreeable did we find that way of passing our time that none of us felt any inclination to go further. it was, if i remember rightly, on the 24th of july that we went to spithead to see those four magnificent ships, the "queen," "vengeance," "st. vincent," and "howe," riding at anchor there. though the morning was calm, a light breeze sprung up just as we got under way, and we arrived in time to see her majesty and prince albert come out of portsmouth harbour in their yacht steamer, and cruise round the ships. we hove-to just to the southward of the "howe," so as to have a good view of all the ships in line, and it was a beautiful and enlivening sight, as they all manned yards and saluted one after the other. from every ship, also, gay flags floated, in long lines from each masthead to the bowsprit and boom-ends, the bands played joyous tunes, and then arose those heart-stirring cheers such as british seamen alone can give. the ladies were delighted-indeed, who could not be so at the proud spectacle? on our way back to cowes we were to land miss manners, who, most unwillingly on her part, i believe, was obliged to return to her guardian. we accordingly hove-to off the pier, and all the party landed to conduct her to mr bosley's house. after taking a turn to the end of the pier, as we were beginning our journey along its almost interminable length, we on a sudden found ourselves confronted by two most incongruous personages walking arm-in-arm--warwick ribbons and miles sandgate. the latter, the instant he saw us, withdrew his arm from that of his companion, and in his usual unembarrassed manner, advanced towards us, putting out his hand to o'malley and me, and bowing to the ladies. he, as usual, placed himself at the side of emily, who had harcourt's arm, and certainly did his best to draw off her attention from him. little ribbons tried, also, to come up and speak to her, but either his courage or his impudence could not overcome the cold, low bow she gave him. by the by, she had bestowed one of a similar nature on sandgate. after some time, however, he ranged up outside of harcourt, for he had no shadow of excuse to speak to either mrs granville or her daughters. "ah, miss emily," he exclaimed in a smirking way, "you said you would prefer returning here in a steamer to a yacht, and now you've come in one after all." emily did not know what to answer to his impudence, so harcourt relieved her by answering-"miss manners selected a larger vessel, and had, also, the society of her friends." "in that case, i might have claimed the honour for my vessel, which is larger than either," observed mr sandgate, with a tone in which i detected a sneer lurking under a pretended laugh. "ah, but then i'm an old friend," interposed the little man; "ain't i, miss emily?--known you ever since you was a little girl, though you do now and then pretend not to remember it." "hang the fellow's impudence!" harcourt was on the point of exclaiming, and perhaps might have said something of the sort, when his attention was called off by another actor in the drama. he was a corpulent, consequential-looking gentleman, with a vulgar expression of countenance, dressed in a broad-brimmed straw hat and shooting-coat, with trousers of a huge plaid pattern, and he had an umbrella under his arm though there was not a cloud in the sky. he was, in fact, just the person i might have supposed as the friend of little ribbons, who, as soon as he espied him, with great glee ran on to meet him. poor emily, at the same time, pronounced the words, "my guardian, mr bosley," in a tone which showed little pleasure at the _rencontre_, and instantly withdrew her arm from harcourt's. she was evidently anxious to prevent a meeting between the parties, for she turned round to the miss granvilles and begged them not to come any further, and then holding out her hand to harcourt, thanked him for the pleasant excursions he had afforded her. she was too late, however, for mr bosley advancing, bowed awkwardly to the miss granvilles, and then addressing emily, said,-"ay, little missie, a long holiday you've been taking with your friends; but i shan't let you play truant again, i can tell you. i've heard all about your doings from my friend warwick here--so come along, come along;" and seizing her arm, without more ceremony he walked her off, while mr ribbons smirked and chuckled at the thoughts of having her now in his power, as he fancied. miles sandgate, at the same time, bowing to the ladies, and nodding to us in a familiar way which verged upon cool impudence, followed their steps. we all felt excessively annoyed at the scene; but far more regretted that so charming a girl should be in the power of such a coarse barbarian as mr bosley appeared. on our passage back to cowes, miss granville told me all she knew of miss manners. she was the daughter of a colonel manners, who had gone out on some mining speculation or other, to one of the south american states, but it was believed that the ship which was conveying him to england had foundered, with all hands, at sea. he had left his daughter emily under the charge of a mr eastway, a merchant of high standing, and a very gentlemanly man. mr eastway, who was the only person cognisant of colonel manners' plans, died suddenly, and mr bosley, his partner, took charge of her and the little property invested in his house for her support. she had been at the same school with the miss granvilles, who there formed a friendship for her which had rather increased than abated after they grew up. this was the amount of the information i could extract from them. she never complained of her guardian to them; but she was as well able as they were to observe his excessive vulgarity, though there was probably under it a kindliness of feeling which in some degree compensated for it. harcourt certainly did his best to conceal the feelings with which he could not help acknowledging to himself she had inspired him, and was much pleased at hearing the granvilles say that they intended writing to her to propose joining her at ryde on the day of the regatta. chapter eleven. a lady spirited away--the chase--the consequences. in the mean time harcourt made daily trips to ryde, and promenaded the pier from one end to the other, and through every street of the town, in the hope of meeting miss manners, but in vain. he met ribbons frequently, but of course he could not inquire after her from him, and consequently avoided him. sandgate he encountered several times; but he had conceived such an antipathy to the man, as well as a suspicion of his character, that, as o'malley was not with us, he did not think it necessary to recognise him. harcourt felt all the time that he was not treating o'malley and me fairly in keeping about the island, and therefore promised to start on a long cruise directly after the regatta. the first day of the regatta was cold, and blowing fresh, so none of the ladies went. it was the schooner-match round the island, when the little "bianca" carried off the cup from her huge competitors, though she came in last, so much time being allowed for the difference of tonnage. the next day of the regatta the weather was most propitious, and we had the pleasure of meeting miss manners on the end of the pier with mr bosley, who saved harcourt from inviting him, by telling us that "if we would give him a hundred pounds for every minute he was in that gimcrack-looking boat, he wouldn't come. let him have a steady-going steamer, which didn't care for winds and tides." he made no objection to emily's accompanying us; though little ribbons coming up just as she was stepping into the boat, reproached her for not visiting the "dido" instead. the sight was beautiful in the extreme; for, independent of the racing-vessels, hundreds of other yachts were sailing about in every direction. the course also being round the nab light, and a similar light-vessel moored at the mouth of the southampton water, the racing-yachts were the whole time in sight of ryde. the royal victoria yacht club-house was decorated with banners, and from a battery in front of it were fired the necessary signals and salutes, while several yachts anchored off the pier-head were also gayly-decked with flags. in the afternoon the queen came from osborne on board the "fairy," amid the animated scene, and made several wide circles; passing close to the pier, and as she glided by, each vessel saluted with their guns or lowered their flags. the whole day the "dido" had most perseveringly endeavoured to follow us, and several times we saw her nearly run foul of other vessels. at last, as she passed the "fairy," ribbons, in a fit of enthusiastic loyalty, i suppose, loaded his gun to the muzzle, and discharged it directly at the steamer, the lighted wadding almost falling on board, while the recoil of the gun upset the little man, who was looking with dismay at the effect of his achievement. he was not hurt, however, for he picked himself up, and managed to fire another wadding on board the "amethyst." the last we saw of him that day, he was hard and fast on a mud-bank half-way between ryde and cowes. sandgate's vessel was also cruising about, and passed us several times, though at a respectful distance; but i saw that his telescope was directed each time towards miss manners. on a sudden it struck me that griffiths might possibly know something of the man, and i accordingly asked him, in a mere casual way, if he had ever seen him before he came on board us? "why, yes, sir, i have seen him more than once," he answered. "maybe he don't recollect me, though we've gone through some wild scenes together." "how is that?" i asked, with surprise. "why, you see, sir, i've done something in the free-trade line myself, i own, and he's lent me a hand at it." "what! you don't mean to say that mr sandgate is a smuggler?" i asked. "yes, i do, sir, though, and many's the rich crop he's run in that ere craft of his." "impossible! why she's a yacht," i replied. "no, sir, she's only a private vessel at the best, and if she was a yacht, she's not the only one as--. howsomdever, i won't say any thing again yachts. it's the lookout of the other members of the club that they don't smuggle, and more's the shame of them who does." "but i thought that smugglers were so bound together that they would never speak against each other," i observed. "so they are, sir; and though that mr sandgate has no reason to expect any favour from me, for reasons he well knows, i wouldn't speak to anybody else of him as i do but to you, or my master, because i don't think he's fit company for such as you, sir, and that's the truth." thinking over what griffiths had told me, i determined in future to be on my guard against sandgate. i, however, did not repeat what i had heard to any one except harcourt. in the afternoon we returned to cowes, leaving miss manners with the granvilles. harcourt having promised to pay some friends a visit at torquay, the next morning we got under way, and, though the winds were light, we got there on the following day. taking all points into consideration, i think torquay and its surrounding scenery is the most beautiful part of england. our stay was short, for harcourt was anxious to get back to cowes, as he had found metal more attractive than even devonshire could afford. we reached cowes late in the day, and after dinner went to the granvilles', for we were now on sufficiently intimate terms to do so. i missed emily from their circle, and inquired if she was still staying with them. "i am sorry to say that she left us suddenly yesterday evening," answered miss granville. "it was almost dark when a letter arrived from her guardian. it stated that he had gone over to portsmouth on business connected with her affairs, and that when there he was taken dangerously ill; that something had transpired which he could alone communicate to her, and he entreated her to come to him without a moment's delay. the bearer of the letter was mr miles sandgate, who, it appeared, had met mr bosley at portsmouth, and volunteered to carry it, and to escort miss manners back. emily immediately prepared for her departure, though she hesitated about accepting mr sandgate's offer. we also sent down to the quay to learn if there was any steamer going to portsmouth that evening, but the last for the day had already left. mr sandgate on this requested emily would allow his vessel to convey her, observing, in the most courteous way, that he saw the difficulties of the case, and would himself remain at cowes till his vessel returned, saying, at the same time, that he thought he might be of service in escorting her to the hotel where mr bosley was lying ill. mamma herself would have gone with her, but she was unwell, and we girls should not much have mended the matter. mr sandgate all the time stood by, acknowledging that he himself was perplexed, and would do any thing she wished; till at last i bethought me of sending our housekeeper, who was very ready to do her best to serve emily, and to this plan, as mr sandgate is a friend of yours as well as of mr bosley's, emily had no further hesitation in agreeing. we walked with her down to the quay, and saw her safely on board." "and have you heard to-day from her?" i asked in a tone of anxiety i could not conceal. "no," answered miss granville; "we thought she would have written." "good heavens! and has she trusted herself with that man?" exclaimed harcourt. miss granville stared. "what do you mean?" she asked. "that i have very serious suspicions of his character," answered harcourt. "i wish that she had taken any other means of getting to portsmouth: not that i for a moment suspect he would not safely convey her there, but i am unwilling that she should--that any lady, a friend of yours, should have even been on board that vessel." "you surprise me!" exclaimed miss granville, now beginning to be really alarmed; and i volunteered to run over to portsmouth at once, to inquire for mr bosley, but she had not heard the name of the hotel where he was staying. "that shall not stop me," replied harcourt. "i will inquire at all of them till i learn." she smiled at his eagerness, though, when he told her all he had heard of sandgate, she saw that he had reason for his annoyance at what had occurred. we were engaged in paying our adieus, when the house-bell rang, and directly afterwards mr warwick ribbons was announced. astonishment was depicted on the countenances of all present, at the appearance of this most unexpected visitor, and all wondered what could have brought him there again. he had, by the by, already called in the morning to beg miss manners and her friends would take a sail in the "dido," but hearing that she was no longer there, had gone away. he gazed about the room, his round eyes blinking with the bright light after having come out of darkness, and, with a flourish of his hat, he bowed to the ladies. "beg pardon," he said, in a nervous tone; "but i've come to ask where miss manners is." "she has gone to see her guardian, mr bosley, who has been taken seriously ill at portsmouth," answered mrs granville. "no, she ain't, ma'am," he exclaimed, throwing his hat down on the ground with vehemence; "mr bosley isn't ill, and isn't at portsmouth, and miss manners isn't with him, for i'm just come from ryde, and there i saw him as well as ever he was in his life, and he begged that i would come and ask what has become of her. your servants this morning told me that she wasn't here, so i made sure that she'd gone back to ryde, and started off to look after her." we were now seriously alarmed at what we had heard, as were the rest of the party in a less degree. nothing more could we elicit from mr ribbons, though miss granville convinced him that the account she gave of miss manners's departure was true, and it appeared too certain that she had been carried off for some reason or other by miles sandgate. i could have staked my existence that she had been as much deceived by him as were her friends. i need not attempt to describe what were harcourt's feelings on finding that his worst suspicions were more than realised. she was in sandgate's power, and his vessel was large enough for him to carry her to any distant part of the world. a bold and accomplished seaman as he was, he would not hesitate, of course, to run across the atlantic, and with the start of upwards of twenty-four hours which he had, it would be impossible to hope to overtake him, even if we could sail at once; but without a good supply of water and provisions, it would be madness to attempt to follow him. this, however, as soon as by possibility we could, we determined to do. ribbons wanted to come also, but we recommended him to employ his vessel in a different direction to ours; and while i was busy in collecting provisions and stores, harcourt made inquiries among all the boatmen and revenue people to learn any thing about the "rover," and what course she had steered on leaving cowes. the wind, it appeared, had been from the eastward, and as the tide was ebbing, she must have gone to the westward, and could not have got round by the nab. at first he could learn nothing about her; but after some time he met a man who had watched her getting under way, and, after she had stood across as if turning up towards portsmouth, had seen her, or a vessel exactly like her, keep away and run past cowes, in the direction he supposed. one of the revenue-men, who had been on duty in the guard-boat, had boarded her, and her people said they were bound for cherbourg. harcourt found, also, that her character was suspected, and that a revenue-cutter was on the watch for her. this circumstance, he conjectured, if he could fall in with the cutter, would give him the best chance of learning the course she had steered. i believe that he ought to have called in the aid of the law, but of that he did not think; as soon as he found that he could gain no further information about the "rover," he came to assist us in getting the "amethyst" ready for sea. we also shipped six additional hands, and some cutlasses and pistols, for we felt certain that, should we fall in with sandgate at sea, he would resist an attempt to rescue emily from his power. by twelve o'clock at night our preparations were completed, and we determined, in the first place, to run across to cherbourg, on the bare possibility of his having gone there, to complete his own supplies for a long voyage. at the same time, we dispatched little ribbons in the "dido," to look into every port along the coast, and to wait for us at penzance. miss granville, with much judgment, undertook to send to every place to the eastward, and to let mr bosley know, that he might take the proper measures to search for the daring scoundrel. i need not say that harcourt was in a perfect fever of excitement, and we were little less calm, particularly o'malley, whose indignation at sandgate's conduct knew no bounds, especially as he had acknowledged him as an acquaintance, and introduced him to harcourt. little ribbons showed that there was something good beneath the mass of absurdity, vanity, and vulgarity which enveloped him, by the eagerness with which he undertook the task we had assigned him; although he must have been pretty well convinced that he had no chance of winning the hand of the young lady, and we verily believed that, should he fall in with sandgate, he would attack him, even with the fearful odds he would have against him. the weather was clear, and the stars and moon shone bright from the sky, as, with a fine fresh breeze from the eastward, and an ebb tide, we got under way and ran through the needles. we then hauled up, and shaped a course for cherbourg, for we had no other clew by which to steer than the vague report that the "rover" had gone there. we thought also that sandgate would very probably have selected that place, as being the nearest french port to the english coast, and one into which he might at all times run, and from which he might as easily escape. for the sake of his victim he would probably go there, in the hopes that she might agree to the object, whatever it might be, which had induced him to venture on the atrocious exploit of carrying her off. we had understood that she was an almost portionless girl, so that her fortune could not have been the temptation: in fact, we were completely in the dark, and it was a subject too delicate and painful to discuss. the wind held fair, and at daybreak we were running across the channel at the rate of eight knots an hour. just before sunrise, when the horizon is often the clearest, i went aloft to discover if any vessels coming from the direction we were steering for were in sight, to give me any information for the chase, but not a sail was visible anywhere ahead of us, though several were seen off island. for the next three or four hours not a cutter was seen, though many square-rigged vessels were standing down channel. almost worn out with mental and physical exertion, harcourt threw himself into his berth, while i took charge of the deck, and promised to have him called should there be any vessel in sight either like the chase or from which we might gain any information about her. he had not been asleep an hour, when he heard a hail, and jumping on deck, just as o'malley was coming to call him, he found that we were hove-to close to a revenue-cutter, and that i had ordered a boat to be lowered ready to go on board her. he jumped in with me, and in another minute we were on the deck of the cutter. her commander was excessively courteous, and ready to do every thing we might propose to overhaul the "rover." from him i found that the information i had gained about sandgate was correct; and he told us that, according to his orders, he had followed the "rover" at a distance, so as not to excite suspicion, and that he had seen her yesterday afternoon enter cherbourg harbour, where, supposing she would remain for some time, he had again stood off during the night. "then to a certainty she is still there!" exclaimed harcourt, in a tone which somewhat surprised the officer. the plan he instantly formed was to run in directly it was dusk, while the cutter remained in the offing, and to get alongside the "rover" before sandgate could have time to carry miss manners on shore. we thus should not lose much time, for the wind had fallen considerably, and we could scarcely expect to reach the mouth of the harbour before dark. the best formed plans are, however, liable to failure, particularly at sea; and as we got well in with the land, just put off point querqueville, it fell almost calm. there was still, however, a light air at times, which sent the cutter through the water, so that by degrees we drew in with the shore. we must have been for some time visible from the heights before it grew dark. the flood-tide was now sweeping us up to the eastward, and before we could get through the western passage we were carried past the breakwater. the large fires lighted by the workmen engaged on that stupendous work dazzled our eyes so much, that we were almost prevented from seeing the entrance, and they totally disabled us from watching the western passage. at last, however, the wind freshened up, and we ran inside the breakwater. the moon had by this time risen, and we could see across that fine sheet of water, which, in extent and the shelter it affords to a fleet, rivals plymouth sound. harcourt's impatience was excessive. we did not anchor; but as there was a light wind we kept cruising about among the men-of-war and large steamers lying there, in the hopes of finding the "rover" brought up among them. in vain, however, did we search; she was nowhere to be seen. at last we determined to go on shore, and endeavour to learn whether the "rover" had been there at all. pulling up between two fine stone piers, we landed at the end of the inner harbour, and repaired at once to the house of monsieur m--, who obligingly assisted us in making the inquiries i desired. after some time we met a person who asserted that he had observed the "rover" at anchor that very evening. "even with this light you can see her from the end of the pier," he observed; "come, i will show you where she is." we hurried to the spot, but the space where she had been was vacant. that she had not entered the inner harbour, monsieur m--was certain, as she could not have come without his knowledge. baffled, but still determined to continue the pursuit, we returned on board; and i was convinced that we had been seen from the shore before dark, and that sandgate, suspecting we had come in quest of him, had slipped out by the western entrance while we were still outside the breakwater. on making inquiries among other vessels anchored near where the "rover" had lain, we found that, as we suspected, a vessel answering her description had got under way at the very time we supposed, and had stood off to the westward. after holding another consultation, we came to the conclusion that sandgate would certainly avoid the open sea, and keep along the french coast, and we thought it probable would make for jersey or guernsey. at all events, thither we determined to run. again we were under sail, and by the time we got clear of the harbour the wind had shifted round to the westward of north, and as the ebb had then made, we suspected sandgate would take advantage of the tide, and run through the race of alderney. we calculated, however, that by the time we could reach it, we should have the full force of that rapid current in our favour, whereas he would only have the commencement of it. no one on board turned in, for the weather was too threatening, the passage we were about to attempt too dangerous, and the time too exciting, to allow us to think of sleep. as we brought the bright light of cape la hogue a little before the larboard beam, the wind increased considerably, and we began to feel the short, broken sea of the race. every moment it increased; rapidly the water rose and fell in white-topped pyramids, leaping high above our bulwarks, and threatening to tumble on board and overwhelm us with its weight. the hatches were battened down and every thing well secured on deck; and well it was so, for sea after sea came leaping over the side, now on the quarter, then over the bows, and now again amidships. it was impossible to say where it would strike the vessel, for not the best steering could avoid it; yet on we flew with the fast rising breeze, rolling and pitching and tumbling, the water foaming and roaring, and literally drenching us with spray even when we avoided the heavier seas. the moon, too, which shone forth on the wild tumult of waters, rather increased the awfulness of the scene, by exhibiting to us the dangers which surrounded us on every side; yet so clear were the lights, both of la hogue on the left and the casquets on the right, that we had no difficulty in steering our course. the dark outline of the small island of sark at last appeared in sight on the starboard beam, and in order to avoid the wild shoal of the dirouilles rocks, towards which the early flood sets, we hauled up more to the westward. still urged onward by the terrific force of the tide, we continued plunging through the mad waters, till daybreak showed us the island of jersey right ahead, and guernsey on our weather beam. so strong was the current, however, that we had drifted considerably to the east, and in the grey light of the morning, not a cable's length from us, appeared the dark heads of the dirouilles, while on the starboard hand the sea, in masses of foam, was breaking over the equally terrific rocks of the paternosters. the wind had now got so far to the westward, and the tide set so strong against us, that finding we were drifting bodily to leeward, we ran close in-shore, and dropped our anchor in a romantic little cove called bouley bay, on the north-east coast of jersey. there was a narrow sandy beach, on which a few boats were drawn up, and a narrow ravine leading down to it, while on either side lofty cliffs towered high above our heads. on the side of the ravine was situated a small hotel, the master of which came off to us as soon as he saw us standing into the bay. to the first question i put to him, as to whether he had seen any vessel off the coast that morning, he told us that at break of day he had been to the top of the cliffs, and had observed a cutter standing between the paternosters and the land, and that he thought it probable she would be able to double cape grosnez before the tide made against her, in which case she would have little difficulty in getting round to st. helier's, if she happened to be bound there. "if she is, we shall catch her to a certainty," exclaimed o'malley; and he forthwith volunteered to go across the island to try what he could do; and i proposed accompanying him, as i thought i might be of assistance in getting hold of sandgate. of course harcourt gladly assented to our offer, although he determined himself to remain in the vessel. i have not described harcourt's feelings all this time;--his hopes and fears, his eager excitement, as he thought the "rover" was within his reach--his dread lest his emily should have suffered injury or alarm-they were too intense for utterance. as soon as the "amethyst" had made sail, o'malley and i started away across the little island as fast as our legs could carry us. we should have hired horses or a carriage, but none were to be procured at the quiet little spot where we landed, so we resolved to trust to our own feet, of which we had by no means lost the use, as the way we made them move over the ground gave full evidence. as soon as we reached st. helier's, we hurried down to the pier, when, to our infinite satisfaction, we beheld the "rover" at anchor in the outer roads. we immediately hurried off to the authorities to give information, and to procure assistance to rescue miss manners. on our way we suddenly came upon the villain of whom we were in search,--sandgate himself. something made him turn round, and he caught sight of us. without a moment's hesitation he darted off towards the quay, where a boat was in waiting, and jumping into her, pulled towards the cutter. he had every reason to fear, we learned; for on his appearance in the morning he had been narrowly watched by the revenue officers, who suspected that some smuggling business had attracted him to the island. such in fact was the case, as he had gone there to settle with his agents, and to procure certain stores before he commenced the long voyage he contemplated, little thinking that we should so soon have been able to track him thither. before we had been able to engage a boat he had got on board, and the "rover" was under way for the westward. i have an idea that some of the boatmen were in league with him. at all events, they seemed to think that it was their business to impede us as much as possible, and to do their best to help the hunted fox to escape. such a feeling is very general among that class. the more eagerness and impatience we exhibited, the more difficulties they threw in our way; and it was not till the "rover" was well clear of the harbour, and pursuit hopeless, that we could obtain a boat. we got one at last, and jumping into it, asked the men to pull away out of the harbour. much to their vexation and to our satisfaction, we in a short time caught sight of our friend's cutter. she had just got off elizabeth castle, which stands on a rocky point, isolated at high water from the mainland. she hove-to, and in a few minutes we jumped on board, and gave harcourt the information we had obtained on shore, and pointed out in the distance a sail which we had little doubt was the "rover." harcourt then told us that after we had started overland, he had remained two hours at anchor, and then shipping an old pilot, in a welsh wig, who only spoke jersey french--the oddest _patois_ he ever heard--he got under way for st. helier's. the "amethyst" beat along that rocky and lofty coast, inside the paternosters, till she rounded cape grosnez--which, as she had had a fresh breeze, she had done without much difficulty. she was then kept away, passing the rugged and threatening rocks of the corbiere, rounding which with a flowing sheet, she was headed in among an archipelago of hidden dangers towards the town of st. helier's. as they were passing the corbiere, harcourt observed a cutter standing away to the westward, as if she had come out of st. aubin's bay. he pointed her out to griffiths, but she was too far off to distinguish what she was, and he was unwilling to make chase till we had ascertained whether sandgate had been there. he accordingly stood on, eager to receive our report. our first act was to tumble the pilot into the shore-boat, and make chase after the cutter harcourt had before observed. she had a very long start, but we trusted to the chances the winds and tides might afford us to come up with her--yet we could not but see that she had many more in her favour to aid her escape. there were, however, still some hours of daylight, and as long as we could keep her in sight, we need not despair. from the course she was steering, as much to the westward as she could lay up with the wind as it then stood, we felt certain that our worst suspicions would be realised, and that sandgate fully intended to run across to america, or to some other distant land. never had the "amethyst" before carried such a press of sail as she now staggered under; but little would it have availed us had the wind, which came in uncertain currents, not shifted round to the northward, while the "rover" still had the breeze as before. it continued, however, increasing till we could no longer bear our gaff-topsail, and so much had we overhauled the chase, that, at sundown, we were within two miles of her. now came the most critical time; as before the moon rose it would scarcely be possible to keep her in sight, and sandgate would not fail to profit by the darkness if he could, to effect his escape--he, also, having the wind exactly as we had it, now sailed as fast as we did. so exciting had become the chase, even to those least interested in it, that every man kept the deck, and with so many well-practised eyes, argus-like, fixed on her, any movement she made would scarcely escape us. the sky was clear, and the stars shone bright, but the wind whistled shrilly, and the foam flew over us, as the little craft, heeling over on her gunwale, plunged and tore through the foaming and tumbling waves. thus passed hour after hour. if the "rover" hauled up, so did we; if she kept away, the movement was instantly seen and followed by us, though all the time, as o'malley observed, he could not, for the life of him, make out any thing but a dark shadow with a scarcely defined form stalking like an uneasy ghost before us; as to know what she was about, it passed his comprehension how we discovered it. that she was, however, increasing her distance we became at length aware, by the difficulty we experienced in seeing her, and at last the shadowy form faded into air. every one on board uttered an exclamation of disappointment, and some swore deeply, if not loudly. "can no one make her out?" harcourt asked. the seamen peered through the darkness. "there she is on the weather-bow," sung out one. "i think i see her right ahead still," said another. "no: i'm blowed if that ain't her on the lee-bow there," was the exclamation of a third. one thing only was certain, she was not to be seen. we determined, however, to keep the same course we had been before steering, and as the moon would rise shortly, we trusted again to sight her. the intervening hour was one of great anxiety; and when, at last, the crescent moon, rising from her watery bed, shed her light upon the ocean, we looked eagerly for the chase. right ahead there appeared a sail, but what she was it was impossible to say; she might be the "rover," or she might be a perfect stranger. on still we steered due west, for, although we felt that our chance of overtaking sandgate was slight indeed, yet our only hope remained in keeping a steady course. thus we continued all night; and the moment the first streaks of light appeared in the sky, harcourt was at the masthead eagerly looking out for the chase. far as the eye could reach, not a sail was to be seen; there was no sign of land, nothing was visible but the grey sky and the lead-coloured water. still harcourt remained at his post, for he dared not acknowledge to himself that emily was lost to him for ever. in vain he strained his eyes, till the sun rose and cast his beams along the ocean. a white object glistened for a moment ahead; it might have been the wing of a sea-fowl, but as he watched, there it remained, and he felt certain that it was the head of a cutter's mainsail. taking the bearings of the sail, he descended on deck, and, as a last hope, steered towards it, sending a hand on the cross-trees to watch her movements. the wind fortunately, as it proved to us, was variable, and thus we again neared the chase. as we rose her hull, griffiths pronounced her to be of the size of the "rover," if not the "rover" herself. "well, we'll do our best to overhaul her," i exclaimed; "set the gaff-topsail. the craft must bear it." and, pressed to her utmost, the little "amethyst" tore through the foaming waves. thus we went on the whole day, till towards the evening the chase again ran us completely out of sight. the wind, also, was falling away, and at sundown there was almost a complete calm. still the vessel had steerage-way, so we kept the same course as before. at length i threw myself on a sofa in the cabin. i know not how long i had slept, when i was awoke by feeling the yacht once more springing livelily through the water. i jumped on deck without awaking o'malley, who was on the opposite sofa. the morning was just breaking, and, by the faint light of the early dawn, i perceived a large dark object floating at some distance ahead of us. "what is that?" i exclaimed to griffiths, who had charge of the deck. "a dismasted ship, sir," was the answer. "i have seen her for some time, and as she lay almost in our course, i steered for her, as i thought as how you'd like to overhaul her, sir." "you did well," i answered. "rouse all hands, and see a boat clear for boarding her. but what is that away there just beyond the wreck? by heavens, it's the `rover,' and becalmed too. grant the wind may not reach her!" awoke by hearing the people called, harcourt and o'malley were by my side. i pointed out the wreck and the cutter to them. "well," exclaimed o'malley, "the big ship there may still float, but the breeze which has been sending us along, may at last reach the sails of the `rover;' so i propose we make sure of her first." to our joy, however, we found that the wind, instead of reaching her, was gradually falling away, and by the time we were up with the wreck, the sea was as calm as a sheet of glass. we were in hopes also that keeping, as we had done, the wreck between us and the "rover," we might have escaped observation, and in the grey light of morning we might come upon her unawares. there were several people on board the ship, who cheered as they saw assistance at hand; and reason they had to be glad, for from the clear streams of water which gushed from her sides, they had evidently great labour to keep her afloat. no time was to be lost, the gig was soon in the water, and harcourt, o'malley, and i, with eight men fully armed, pulled towards the "rover," while old griffiths, the master, boarded the ship in the other boat. my friend's heart beat quick as we neared the cutter. she was the "rover," there was no doubt, but whether sandgate would attempt to defend his vessel was the question. a moment more would solve it. we dashed alongside; the men, stowed away in the bottom of the boat, sprang up, and before the crew of the "rover" had time to defend themselves, we were on board. except the man at the helm and the look-out forward, the watch on deck were all asleep, and those two, as it afterwards appeared, were glad to see us approach. the noise awoke sandgate, who, springing on deck, found himself confronted by o'malley and me, while half his crew were in the power of my people, and the fore-hatch was battened over the rest. a pistol he had seized in his hurry was in his hand; he pointed it at my breast, but it missed fire; on finding which, he dashed it down on the deck, and before we could seize him, retreated forward, where some of his crew rallied round him. with fear and hope alternately racking his bosom, harcourt hurried below. he pronounced his own name; the old nurse opened the door of the main cabin--a fair girl was on her knees at prayer. she sprang up, and seeing him, forgetful of all else, fell weeping in his arms. i shall pass over all she told him, except that sandgate had behaved most respectfully to her, informing her, however, that he should take her to the united states, where she must consent to marry him, and that, on their return to england, he would put her in possession of a large fortune, to which by some means he had discovered she was heiress, and which had induced him to run off with her. it was, i afterwards learned, his last stake, as the reduction of duties no longer enabled him to make a profit by smuggling; and as he had no other means of supporting his extravagant habits, he was a ruined man. sandgate's people seemed resolved to stand by him, but not to proceed to extremities, or to offer any opposition to our carrying off miss manners and her attendant. he evidently was doing all he could to induce them to support him; and i believe, had he possessed the power, he would, without the slightest compunction, have hove us all over board, and carried off his prize in spite of us. as it was, he could do nothing but gnash his teeth and scowl at us with unutterable hatred. handing the young lady and the old nurse into the boat, we pulled away from the "rover." of course, we should have wished to have secured sandgate; but as we had come away without any legal authority to attempt so doing, we saw that it would be wiser to allow him to escape. we should probably have overpowered him and his lawless crew, but then the females might have been hurt in the scuffle, and we were too glad to recover them uninjured to think at the moment of the calls of justice. what was our surprise, as harcourt handed her on to the deck of the yacht, to see her rush forward into the arms of an old gentleman who stood by the companion-hatch. "my own emily!" he exclaimed, as he held her to his heart. it was colonel manners. "my father!" burst from her lips. a young lady was reclining on the hatch near him; she rose as she saw emily, and they threw themselves on each other's neck. "my sister!" they both exclaimed, and tears of joy started to their eyes. there were several other strangers on board, who, by griffiths' exertions, had been removed from the wreck. our boats were busily employed in removing the others, for there was no time to lose, as the ship was settling fast in the water. all the people being placed in safety, we proceeded to remove the articles of greatest value and smallest bulk on board the two vessels, which became then very much loaded, when, a breeze springing up, another sail hove in sight: she bore down towards us, and, in a short time, the little fat figure of mr warwick ribbons graced the deck of the "amethyst." his delight at seeing emily in safety was excessive, but, though he looked sentimental, he said nothing; and, when he heard that the colonel was alive, and that there was another sister in the case, his face elongated considerably. from motives of charity, i hurried him, with several of the passengers and part of the cargo, on board the "dido," and the three vessels made sail together for falmouth. just as we were leaving the ship, a deep groan issued from her hold, and, her head inclining towards the water, she slowly glided down into the depths of the ocean. landing all our passengers at falmouth, except the colonel and his daughters, we had a quick run to cowes. colonel manners established his claim to his property. o'malley had made such good use of his time during the voyage, that he won the heart and hand of julia manners; while, as may be suspected, emily owned, that if harcourt loved her, their affection was reciprocal; and the same day saw them joined respectively together in holy matrimony. such was the result of my friend harcourt's summer cruise, and i think you will all agree that the narrative is not altogether unworthy of the name of a romance. the last time i saw little ribbons he was on board the "dido," which lay high and dry on the mud off ryde, and i afterwards heard that he married a miss bosley, who, i conclude, was a daughter of old bosley's. "and what became of the rascal sandgate?" exclaimed hearty; "by neptune! i should like to come up with the fellow, and to lay my craft alongside his till i had blown her out of the water. fancy a scoundrel in the nineteenth century venturing to run off with a young lady!" we laughed at his vehemence. hearty always spoke under a generous impulse. "oh, it's not the first case of the sort i have heard of," said carstairs; "more than one has occurred within the last few years in ireland; but i agree with hearty, that i should like to catch mr sandgate, for the sake of giving him a good thrashing. though i hadn't the pleasure of knowing miss manners, every man of honour should take a satisfaction in punishing such a scoundrel." bubble and porpoise responded heartily to the sentiment, and so strong a hold did the account take of the minds of all the party, that we talked ourselves into the idea that it would be our lot to fall in with sandgate, and to inflict the punishment he had before escaped. "will bubble had taken an active part in fitting out the yacht, and in selecting most of the crew; he consequently was on rather more intimate terms with them than the rest of us; not that it was the intimacy which breeds contempt, but he took a kindly interest in their welfare, and used to talk to them about their families, and the past incidents of their lives. indeed, under a superficial coating of frivolity and egotism, i discovered that bubble possessed a warm and generous heart,--fully alive to the calls of humanity. i do not mean to say that the coating was not objectionable; he would have been by far a superior character without it. indeed, perhaps all i ought to say is, that he was capable of better things than those in which he too generally employed his time. he returned aft one day from a visit forward, and told us he had discovered that several of the men were first-rate yarn-spinners. the master," said he, "seems a capital hand; but old sleet beats all the others hollow. if it would not be subversive of all discipline, i wish you would come forward and hear them in the forecastle as one caps the other's tale with something more wonderful still." "i don't think that would quite do," said hearty; "if we could catch them on deck spinning their yarns, it would be very well. but, at all events, i will invite snow, into the cabin and consult him." according to hearty's proposal, he invited snow down. "mr snow," said hearty, "we hear that some of the people forward are not bad hands at spinning yarns, and, if you could manage it, we should be glad to hear them, but it would never do to send for them aft for the purpose." "you are right, sir, they would become tongue-tied to a certainty," answered snow; "just let me alone, and i will manage to catch some of them in the humour. several of them have been engaged, one time or another, in the free-trade, and have some curious things to tell about it." "but i thought smuggling had been knocked on the head long ago," observed hearty. "oh, no, sir! of late years a very considerable blow has been struck against it; but even now some people find inducements to follow it," answered the master. "i found it out to be a bad trade many years ago, and very few of those i know who still carry it on do more than live, and live very badly too; some of them spending many a month out of the year in prison, and that is not where an honest man would wish to be." however, i have undertaken to chronicle the adventures of the "frolic," and of those who dwelt on board her, so that i must not devote too much of our time to the yarns, funs, witticisms, and anecdotes and good sayings with which we banished any thing like tedium during our voyage. no blue devils could stand for an instant such powerful exorcisms. it was not, however, till some time after this that we benefited by snow's inquiries among the crew. chapter twelve. the "frolic" in a gale, in which the frolickers see no fun--a sail in sight--her fate--an unexpected increase to the crew--bubble shows that he can think and feel--intelligence obtained. "what sort of weather are we going to have, snow?" asked hearty, as we came on deck after dinner one afternoon, when the cutter was somewhere about the middle of the bay of biscay. "dirty, sir, dirty!" was the unenlivening answer, as the old master looked with one eye to windward, which just then was the south-west. in that direction thick clouds were gathering rapidly together, and hurrying headlong towards us, like, as carstairs observed, "a band of fierce barbarians, rushing like a torrent down upon the plain." the sea grew darker and darker in hue, and then flakes of foam, white as the driven snow, blew off from the hitherto smooth surface of the ocean. the sea rose higher and higher, and the cutter, close-hauled, began to pitch into, them with an uneasy motion, subversive of the entire internal economy of landsmen. "the sooner we get the canvas off her the better, now, sir," said snow to porpoise, who had come on deck after calculating our exact position on the charts. "as soon as you like," was the answer. "we shall have to heave-to, i suspect; but that little matters, as we have plenty of sea-room out here, and she may dance away for a fortnight with the helm a-lee, and come to no harm." the topmast was struck; the jib was taken in, and a storm-jib set; the foresail was handed, and the mainsail meantime was closely reefed. relieved for a time, she breasted the seas more easily; but the wind had not yet reached its strength. before nightfall down came the gale upon us with all its fury; the cutter heeled over to it as she dashed wildly through the waves. "the sooner we get the mainsail altogether off her the better, sir," said snow. this was accordingly done, and the trysail was set instead, and the helm lashed a-lee. "there; we are as snug and comfortable as possible," exclaimed porpoise, as the operation was completed. "now all hands may turn in and go to sleep till the gale is over." the landsmen looked rather blue. "very funny notion this of comfort!" exclaimed carstairs, who had the worst sea-going inside of any of the party. "oh, oh, oh! is it far from the shore?" "couldn't get there, sir, if any one was to offer ten thousand guineas," said snow. "we are better as we are, sir, out here--by very far." the cutter, which in cowes harbour people spoke of as a fine large craft, now looked and felt very like a mere cockle-shell, as she pitched and tumbled about amid the mighty waves of the atlantic. "don't you feel very small, carstairs?" exclaimed hearty, as he sat convulsively grasping the sides of the sofa in the cabin. "yes, faith, i do," answered the gentle giant, who lay stretched out opposite to him. "never felt so very little since i was a baby in long-clothes. i say, porpoise, i thought you told me that the bay of biscay was always smooth at this time of the year." "so it should be," replied our fat captain. "no rule without an exception though; but never mind, it will soon roll itself quiet; and then the cutter will do her best to make up for lost time." the person evidently most at his ease was will bubble. blow high or blow low, it seemed all the same to him; he sang and whistled away as happily as ever. "oh, oh, oh! you jolly dog, don't mock us in our misery!" exclaimed carstairs with a groan. "on no account," answered will, with a demure look. "i'll betake myself to the dock, and smoke my weed in quiet." on deck he went, and seated himself on the companion-hatch, where he held on by a becket secured for the purpose; but as to smoking a cigar, that was next to an impossibility, for the wind almost blew the leaves into a flame. i was glad to go on deck, also; for the skylights being battened down made the cabin somewhat close. the cutter rode like a wild fowl over the heavy seas, which, like dark walls crested with foam, came rolling up as if they would ingulf her. just as one with threatening aspect approached her, she would lift her bows with a spring, and anon it would be found that she had sidled up to the top of it. it was a wild scene--to a landsman it must have appeared particularly so. the dark, heavy clouds close overhead; the leaden seas, not jumping and leaping as in shallow waters, but rising and falling, with majestic deliberation, in mountain masses, forming deep valleys and lofty ridges, from the summits of which, high above our heads, the foam was blown off in sheets of snowy whiteness with a hissing sound, interrupted by the loud flop of the seas as they dashed together. we were not the only floating thing within the compass of vision. far away i could see to windward, as the cutter rose to the top of a sea, the canvas of a craft as we were hove-to. she was a small schooner, and though we undoubtedly were as unsteady as she was, it seemed impossible, from the way she was tumbling about, that any thing could hold together on board her. i had rejoined the party in the cabin, when an exclamation from bubble called us all on deck. "the schooner has bore up, and is running down directly for us!" he exclaimed. so it was; and in hot haste she seemed indeed. "something is the matter on board that craft," said porpoise, who had been looking at her through his glass. "yes, she has a signal of distress flying." "the lord have mercy on the hapless people on board, then!" said i. "small is the help we or any one else can afford them." "if we don't look out, she'll be aboard us, sir," sung out snow. "to my mind, she's sprung a leak, and the people aboard are afraid she'll go down." "stand by to make sail on the cutter; and put the helm up," cried porpoise. "we must not let her play us that trick, at all events." on came the little schooner, directly down for us, staggering away under a close-reefed fore-topsail, the seas rolling up astern, and threatening every instant to wash completely over her. how could her crew expect that we could aid them? still it was evidently their only hope of being saved--remote as was the prospect. they might expect to be able to heave-to again under our lee, and to send a boat aboard us. the danger was that in their terror they might run us down, when the destruction of both of us was certain. we stood all ready to keep the cutter away, dangerous as was the operation--still it was the least perilous of two alternatives. we were, as may be supposed, attentively watching every movement of the schooner; so close had she come that we could see the hapless people on board stretching out their arms, as if imploring that aid which we had no power to afford them. on a sudden they threw up their hands; a huge sea came roaring up astern of them; they looked round at it--we could fancy that we almost saw their terror-stricken countenances, and heard their cry of despair. down it came, thundering on her deck; the schooner made one plunge into the yawning gulf before her. will she rise to the next sea? "where is she?" escaped us all. with a groan of horror we replied to our own question--"she's gone!" down, down she went before our very eyes--her signal of distress fluttering amid the seething foam, the last of her we saw. perhaps her sudden destruction was the means of our preservation. some dark objects were still left floating amid the foam; they were human beings struggling for life; the sea tossed them madly about--now they were together, now they were separated wide asunder. two were washed close to us; we could see the despairing countenance of one poor fellow; his staring eye-balls; his arms outstretched as he strove to reach us. in vain; his strength was unequal to the struggle; the sea again washed him away, and he sunk before our sight. his companion still strove on; a sea dashed towards us; down it came on our deck. "hold on, hold on, my lads!" sung out porpoise. it was well that all followed the warning, or had we not, most certainly we should have been washed overboard. the lively cutter, however, soon rose again to the top of the sea, shaking herself like a duck after a dive beneath the surface. as i looked around to ascertain that all hands were safe, i saw a stranger clinging to the shrouds. i with others rushed to haul him in, and it was with no little satisfaction that we found that we had been the means of rescuing one of the crew of the foundered schooner from a watery grave. the poor fellow was so exhausted that he could neither speak nor stand, so we carried him below, and stripping off his wet clothes, put him between a couple of warm blankets. by rubbing his body gently, and pouring down a few drops of hot brandy and water, he was soon recovered. he seemed very grateful for what had been done for him, and his sorrow was intensely severe when he heard that no one else of the schooner's crew had been saved. "ay, it's more than such a fellow as i deserve!" he remarked. i was much struck by his frank and intelligent manners, when having got on a suit of dry clothes, he was asked by hearty into the cabin, to give an account of the catastrophe which had just occurred. "you see, gentlemen," said he, "the schooner was a levant trader. her homeward-bound cargoes were chiefly figs, currants, raisins, and such-like fruit. a better sea-boat never swam. i shipped aboard her at smyrna last year, and had made two voyages in her before this here event occurred. we were again homeward-bound, and had made fine weather of it till we were somewhere abreast of cape finisterre, when we fell in with some baddish weather, in which our boats and caboose were washed away; and besides this, we received other damage to hull and rigging. we were too much knocked about to hope to cross the bay in safety, so we put into corunna to refit. the schooner leaked a little, though we thought nothing of it, and as we could not get at the leak, as soon as we had got the craft somewhat to rights, we again put to sea. we had been out three days when this gale sprang up, and the master thought it better to heave the vessel to, that she might ride it out. the working of the craft very soon made the leak increase; all hands went to the pumps, but the water gained on us, and as a last chance the master determined to run down to you, in the hopes that before the schooner went down, some of us might be able to get aboard you. you saw what happened. oh, gentlemen! may you never witness the scene on board that vessel, as we all looked into each other's faces, and felt that every hope was gone! it was sad to see the poor master, as he stood there on the deck of the sinking craft, thinking of his wife and seven or eight little ones at home whom he was never to see again, and whom he knew would have to struggle in poverty with the hard world! he was a good, kind man; and to think of me being saved,--a wild, careless chap, without any one to care for him, who cares for nobody, and who has done many a wild, lawless deed in his life, and who, maybe, will do many another! i can't make it out; it passes my notion of things." will bubble had been listening attentively to the latter part of the young seaman's account of himself. he walked up to him with an expression of feeling i did not expect to see, seemingly forgetful that any one else was present, and took his hand: "god in his mercy preserved you for better things, that you might repent of your follies and vices, and serve him in future. oh, on your knees offer up your heartfelt thanks to him for all he has done for you!" hearty and carstairs opened their eyes with astonishment as they heard will speaking. "why, bubble, what have?" began hearty. "i have been thinking," was the answer; "i had time while you fellows lay sick; and i bethought me how very easily this little cockle-shell might go down and take up its abode among the deposits of this adamite age,"--will was somewhat of a geologist,--"and how very little we all were prepared to enter a pure state of existence." "that's true, sir," said the seaman, not quite understanding, however, bubble's remarks; "that's just what i thought before the schooner sank. i am grateful to god, sir; but, howsomdever, i feel that i am a very bad, good-for-nothing chap." "try to be better, my friend; you'll have help from above if you ask for it," said bubble, resuming his seat. "why, where did you get all that from?" asked carstairs, languidly; "i didn't expect to hear you preach, old fellow." "i got it from my bible," answered bubble. "i'm very sure that's the only book of sailing directions likely to put a fellow on a right course, and to keep him there, so i hope in future to steer mine by it; but i don't wish to be preaching. it's not my vocation, and a harum-scarum, careless fellow as i am is not fitted for it; only all i ask of those present is to think--to think of their past lives; how they have employed their time--whether in the way for which they were sent into the world to employ it, in doing all the good to their fellow-creatures they can; or in selfish gratification; and to think of the future, that future without an end--to think if they are fitted for it--for its pure joys--its never-ending study of god's works; to think whether they have any claim to enter into realms of glory--of happiness." will sprang on deck as he ceased speaking. he had evidently worked himself up to utter these sentiments, so different to any we should have conceived him to have possessed. i never saw a party of gentlemen more astonished, if not disconcerted. had not tom martin, the young seaman just saved, been present, i do not know what might have been said. still the truth, the justice, the importance of what bubble had said, struck us all, though perhaps we thought him just a little touched in the upper story, to venture on thus giving expression to his feelings. while tom martin had been giving an account of himself, i had been watching his countenance, and it struck me that i had seen him somewhere before. "you've been a yachtsman, i think," i observed; "i have known your face, i am sure." "yes, sir," said he, frankly; "and, if i mistake not, i know yours. i used to meet you at cowes last year; but the craft i belonged to i can't say was a yacht, though its owner called her one. i'm sure you gentlemen won't take advantage of any thing i say against me, and so i'll tell you all about the matter. the craft i speak of was the `rover' cutter, belonging to mr miles sandgate. i first shipped aboard her about three years ago; he gave high pay, and let us carry on aboard pretty much as we liked, when not engaged in his business. an old chum of mine, a man called ned holden, who was, i may say, born and bred a smuggler, first got me to join; there wasn't a dodge to do the revenue which ned wasn't up to, and he thought no more harm of smuggling than of eating his dinner. i didn't inquire how the `rover' was employed; she belonged to a gentleman who paid well, and that's all i asked, though i might have suspected something. she had just come from foreign parts, and the people who had then been in her talked of all sorts of curious things they had done. smuggling was just nothing to what she'd been about. mr sandgate seemed to have tried his hand at every thing. he had been out in the china seas, running opium among the long pigged-tailed gentlemen of that country. more than once he had some hot fighting with the government revenue-vessels, and several times he was engaged with the pirates, who swarm, they say, in those seas. i did not hear whether he made money out there, but after a time he got tired of the work, and shaped a course for england. on his way, after leaving the cape of good hope, he fell in with a craft, which he attacked and took. she was laden with goods of all sorts fitted for the markets in africa, and intended to be exchanged for slaves. besides them she had the irons, and all the other fittings for a slaver. such vessels sail without a protection from any government. after he had taken every thing he wanted, he hove the rest overboard, and then told the crew that he gave them their liberty, and that they might make the best of their way back to the parts from whence they came. with the goods he had thus obtained he stood for the slave-coast; he had acquaintance there, as everywhere else; indeed it would be difficult to say in what part of the world he would not find himself at home. he was not long in fitting the `rover' inside into a regular slave-vessel, but outside she looked as honest and harmless as any yacht. he ran up the gaboon, or one of those rivers on the slave-coast--i forget which exactly--where lived a certain don lopez mendoza, the greatest slave-dealer in those parts; besides which, as i heard say, it would be difficult to find anywhere a bigger villain. well, he and mr sandgate were hand-in-glove, and one would have done any thing for each other. they were fairly matched, you may depend on it; however that might be, the don took all the goods mr sandgate brought him, and asked no questions, and filled his vessel in return with a lot of prime slaves and water, and farina enough to carry them across to havana. as soon as he got them on board he was out of the river again, and, loosening his jib, away he went with some two hundred human souls stowed under hatches, in a craft fit to carry only thirty or forty in comfort. she had a quick run across, and escaped all the ships-of-war looking after slavers. mr sandgate there sold the blacks for a good round sum, and thought he had done a very clever thing. however, he does not seem to be a man to keep money, though he is ready enough to do many an odd thing to get it. he gave his crew a handsome share of the profits; he and they went ashore at the havana, and spent it as fast as they had made it, just in the old buccaneering style i've heard tell of, in all sorts of wild games and devilry, till i rather fancy the dons were glad to be rid of them. when their money was nearly all gone, they went aboard again and made sail. i don't mean to say but what i suppose mr sandgate had some left. he had also armed the cutter, and stored and provisioned her completely for a voyage round the world. "once more he stood across for the african coast. he had heard, it appears, that one of those store-ships i was speaking of, which supply slavers with goods and provisions, and irons and stores, was to be met with in a certain latitude. he fell in with her, and, without asking her leave or saying a word, he ran her alongside, and, before her people had time to stand to their arms, he had mastered every one of them. he never ill-treated any one, but he just clapped them in irons till he had rifled the vessel, and then, leaving them a somewhat scant supply of provisions and water, he, as before, told them that they were at liberty to make the best of their way home again. "some men would, perhaps, have gone back to the coast, taken in a cargo of slaves, and returned to the havana or the brazils, but our gentleman was rather too cautious to run any such risk. he knew that he had made enemies, who would try to prove him a pirate, with or without law; so he just goes off the gaboon, and sends in a note to his friend don lopez, to say that he had got a rich cargo for him, which he should have for so many dollars, two thousand or more below its value. the don, in return, despatched two or three small craft with the sum agreed on aboard, and all being found right and fair, the exchange was quickly made, and mr sandgate once more shaped a course for england. as you may suppose, every one was sworn to secrecy aboard; but, bless you, the sort of chaps he had got for a crew didn't much care for an oath; and besides, as it was that they mightn't say any thing out of the ship, they didn't mind talking about it to me and others who afterwards joined her. he brought home a good round sum of money; but he took it into his head to go up to london, and what with gambling and such-like ways, he soon managed to get rid of most of it. he had got tired, it seems, of having his neck constantly in a noose, so he took to the quieter occupation of smuggling. he didn't do it in the common way like the people along the coast, but in a first-rate style, like a gentleman. he had some relatives or other, rich silk merchants in london, and he undertook to supply them with goods to any amount, free of duty. there was nothing new in the plan, for it was an old dodge of this house, by which they had made most of their money. you would be surprised, gentlemen, to hear of the number of people employed in the business, and who well knew it was against the laws. first, there were the agents in france to buy the goods, and to have them packed in small bales fit for running; then they had to ship them; next there were the cutters and other craft to bring them over, and the people to assist at their landing; and the carters with their light carts to bring them up to london; and the clerks in the warehouse in london, many of whom knew full well that not a penny of duty had ever been paid on the goods; and the shop people too, who knew full well the same thing, as they could not otherwise have got their articles so cheap. it's a true saying, that one rascal makes many; and so it was in this case." much to the same effect tom told us about sandgate; but as with several of the points the readers are already acquainted, i need not repeat them. tom frankly acknowledged that he was on board the "rover" when sandgate attempted to carry off miss manners; but he seemed to be little aware of the enormity of the offence. he said that he fancied the young lady had come of her own free will, as sandgate had made the crew believe a tale to that effect. "but what became of him after that?" i asked, eagerly. "did he return to the coast of africa, and turn pirate again?" "no, sir," answered martin. "he had several plans of the sort though, i believe; but at last we stood for the rock of gibraltar, and ran through the straits into the mediterranean. we could not make out what mr sandgate was about. we touched at two or three places on the african coast, and he had some communication with the moors. to my mind, he scarcely knew himself what he would be at. he spoke and acted very often like a person out of his wits. sometimes we would be steering for a place, and our course would be suddenly altered, and we would go back to the port from whence we came. however, by degrees we got higher and higher up the mediterranean. we did not touch at malta, but stood on till we got among the greek islands: there he seemed quite at home, and was constantly having people aboard whom he treated as old friends. still we did nothing to make the vessel pay her way, and that was very unlike mr sandgate's custom. after a time we ran on to smyrna: we thought that we were going to take in a cargo of figs and raisins, and to return home. one day, however, a fine greek polacca-brig stood into the harbour, and mr sandgate, after examining her narrowly, went on board her. on his return, calling us together, he said that as he was going to sell the cutter, he should no longer have any need of our services; and that as he was very well pleased with the way we had more than once stuck by him, he would therefore add five pounds to the wages of each man. we all cheered him, and thought him a very fine fellow; and so i believe he would have been had he known what common honesty means. the `rover' was sold next day, and we all had to bundle on shore and look out for fresh berths. when we were there i heard some curious stories about that polacca-brig; and all i can say is, that if i had been aboard a merchantman and sighted her, i shouldn't have been comfortable till we got clear of her again. whether mr sandgate went away in her or not i cannot say for certain; all i know is, that the polacca-brig left smyrna in a few days. the crew of the `rover' joined different vessels, and though i was very often on shore, i saw no more of him. the rest of my story you know, gentlemen. i shipped on board the schooner which you lately saw go down." "very extraordinary story altogether," exclaimed hearty, as soon as tom martin had left the cabin, highly pleased with his treatment. "if you had not been able to corroborate some of it, brine, i certainly should not have felt inclined to believe it." "i know the circumstance of one quite as extraordinary," said porpoise. "some day i will tell it you if you wish it. i should not be surprised when we get up the straits if we hear more of mr sandgate and his doings. he is evidently a gentleman not addicted to be idle, though, clever as he is, he will some day be getting his neck into a halter." "i should think it was well fitted for one by this time," added carstairs; "but i say, porpoise, let us have your story at once; there's nothing like the present time for a good thing when it can be got, and we want something amusing to drive away all the bitter blue-devilish feelings which this confounded tumblefication of a sea has kicked up in our insides." "you shall have it, with all my heart, and without delay," added porpoise. "all i have first to say is, that as i was present during many of the scenes, and as descriptions of the others were given me, strange as the account may appear, it is as true as every thing we have just heard about that fellow sandgate. i could almost have fancied that he and the hero of my story were one and the same person." our curiosity being not a little excited by this prelude, in spite of the rolling and pitching of the vessel, seldom has a more attentive audience been collected, as our jovial companion began his story. chapter thirteen. lieutenant porpoise's story--the black slaver--the spanish maiden--the deserter's dream--the flight. the british cruiser. "keep a bright look-out, collins, and let me be called if any thing like a sail appears in sight," said captain staunton, as he was quitting the quarter-deck of his majesty's brig "sylph," which he had the honour to command. she was then stationed on the coast of africa. some years have passed by, it must be remembered, since the time to which i now allude. "ay, ay, sir," answered the first lieutenant, who was the officer addressed. "with so many sharp eyes on board it shall be hard if we miss seeing him, should he venture to approach the coast, and if we see him, harder still if he escape us." captain staunton descended to his cabin, and feverish and ill from long watching and the effects of the pestiferous climate, he threw himself into his cot, and endeavoured to snatch a few hours' repose, to better prepare himself for the fresh exertions he expected to be called on to make. but sleep, which kindly so seldom neglects to visit the seaman's eyelids, when wooed even amid the raging tempest, refused for some time to come at his call. "i would sacrifice many a year's pay to catch that fellow," he continued, as he soliloquised half aloud. "the monstrous villain! while he lives i feel that the stain yet remains on the cloth he once disgraced. we will yet show him that the honour of the service cannot be insulted with impunity, although he dares our vengeance by venturing among us when he knows every vessel on the station is on the watch for him. and yet i once regarded that man as a friend; i loved him almost as a brother, for i thought his heart beat with the most noble sentiments. i thought him capable of the like deeds; but all the time he must have been a most accomplished hypocrite, though still he has one good quality, he is brave, or perhaps, it may be, he possesses rather physical insensibility to danger and utter recklessness of all consequences. he started fairly in life, and at one time gave good promise of rising in his profession. i knew him to be wild and irreligious; but i fancied his faults arose from thoughtlessness and high spirit, and i hoped that experience of their ill effects and a good example would cure them; but i now see that vice, from an ill-regulated education, was deeply rooted in him, and, alas! has that good example which might have saved him always been set him? i fear not. ah! if those in command could foresee the dreadful results of their own acts, of their careless expressions, they would keep a better watch over themselves, and often shudder with horror at the crime and misery they have caused." with a prayer to heaven to enable him to avoid the faults of which he felt with pain that he had himself too often been guilty, the commander of the brig fell asleep. the officer of the watch, meantime, continued his walk on the quarter-deck, his thoughts taking a turn very similar to those of his chief, for they had often together discussed the subject, and the same train of ideas were naturally suggested by the same circumstance, as he also had known the person of whom the captain was thinking. the "sylph" was at this time some miles off the african coast, which, although not seen from the deck, was faintly distinguishable from the masthead; it appeared like a long blue line drawn on the ocean with a slight haze hanging over it, scarcely to be perceived by unpractised eyes. the part visible was about the mouth of the pongos river, a well-known slave depot, the favourite resort of the spanish south american slavers. the surface of the ocean was smooth, although occasionally ruffled by a light breeze, which, coming from seaward, served to cool the brows of the crew, and restore some vigour to their exhausted limbs; yet there was the usual swell, which seldom leaves the bosom of the atlantic to perfect tranquillity. it came in from the west, slowly and silently, making the vessel roll from side to side like a drunken man. though she was not, it must be understood, at anchor, she had not a stitch of canvas spread which would have contributed, had there been any wind, to steady her. all her sails were closely furled, but her studding-sail booms were at their yard-arms, their gear was rove, and the studding-sails themselves were on deck, ready to set in a moment. the boats, too, were clear to hoist out in an instant, and there, was every sign on deck that the now apparently listless crew would, at first sound of the boatswain's whistle, spring into life and activity, and that the now bare tracery of spars and rigging would, the second after, be covered with a broad sheet of snowy canvas. the "sylph" had been about a year on the coast. when she left england, her officers and crew were a particularly fine, healthy set of men, and the whole of them could scarcely, in the course of their lives, have mustered a month's illness among them. since they came to their present station, the second lieutenant and second master had died, as had two midshipmen and thirteen of the crew, and nearly all the remainder had, more or less, suffered, few retaining any traces of their former ruddy and healthy appearance. they had, however, to be sure, before being well acclimated, or having learned the necessary precautions to take against illness, been exposed to a good deal of hard service in boats up the rivers, where were sown the seeds of the disease which afterwards proved so fatal among them. fresh officers and men had been appointed to fill the places of those who had died, and the brig was now again the same model of discipline and beauty which she had before been. when captain staunton joined the brig, he is reported to have called the men aft, and to have made them a speech much to this effect:-"now, my men, that you may not have any long discussions as to the character of your new commander, i wish to let you clearly understand that i never overlook drunkenness, or any other crime whatever, either in my officers or men. i shall not say whether i like flogging or not, but while it is awarded by the articles of war, i shall inflict it. remember, however, i would much rather reward than punish. the men who do their duty well and cheerfully, i will advance as far as i have the power. i wish this to be a happy ship, and it will be your own faults if you do not make it so. now pipe down." the men agreed, as they sat in knots together after they had knocked off work for the day, that they liked the cut of their new skipper's jib, and that his speech, though short, was good, and had no rigmarole in it. he afterwards invited his officers to dine with him, and in the course of conversation impressed on their minds that he considered gross language and swearing not only ungentlemanly, but wicked, and that he was certain the men did not obey at all the more readily for having it applied to them; that the men would follow the example they set them; that their influence depended on their doing their duty, and that if they did it the men would do theirs. "drunkenness," he observed, "is by some considered a very venial offence, but as the lives of all on board, as the discipline of the ship depends on the judgment of those in command, however much i shall regret the necessity, i shall break any officer who is guilty of it." as captain staunton himself practised what he preached, and set an example of all the high qualities which adorn his noble profession, the necessity he would have deplored never occurred; punishment was very rare, and the "sylph" _was_ a happy ship. having made this digression, we will return to the time when the "sylph" lay on the waste of waters, rolling her polished sides in the shining ocean, while the drops of spray which they threw off sparkled like diamonds in the rays of the burning sun. had it not been for the light breeze we spoke of, the heat would have been intolerable on deck, for there was not the usual shade from the sails to shelter the seamen from the fury of the burning orb; but all were far too eager for the appearance of a vessel they were looking for to think of the inconvenience. three days before, an english homeward-bound merchantman had spoken them, and brought them the information that a large slaver was every moment expected in the river; a very fast-sailing schooner, which had already once before escaped them by the daring and good seamanship of her commander, who was supposed to be an englishman. thus much the crew knew, and they added their own comments, believing him to be a character similar to the famed vanderdecken, or, at all events, in league with the prince of terror, davy jones. they had already been two days thus watching, after having ascertained, by sending the boats up the river, that the slaver was not there. captain staunton, knowing the man with whom he had to deal, was aware that his only chance of capturing him was by extreme caution. he had therefore furled all the sails of the brig in the way we have described, that she might not be discovered by the slaver till the fellow had got close up to her, and he then hoped to be able, without a long chase, to bring her to action. each night, as soon as it grew dusk, the "sylph" made sail and stood in-shore, in order better to watch the coast, and before daylight she was again at her former post. it has been asserted that the african cruisers have allowed the slavers to get into port, and have not attempted to capture them till they have got their slaves on board, in order either to gain the head-money, or to make more sure of their condemnation; but if this was ever done, captain staunton was not the person to do so; he knew, moreover, that the man who commanded the slaver he was in search of would not yield her up without a struggle, and, for the sake of saving many lives which must otherwise inevitably be sacrificed, he was anxious to bring her to action before she got her slaves on board. the officer of the watch continued pacing the deck with his spy-glass under his arm, every now and then hailing the masthead to keep the lookouts on the alert, but the same answer was each time given. "nothing in sight, sir." thus the day wore on. towards the evening the breeze, which had since the morning been sluggish, increased considerably; but as the current which is to be found in nearly every part of the ocean set in an opposite direction to it, the brig did not materially alter her position. a fresh hand had just relieved the look-out at the masthead at eight bells in the afternoon watch. his eyes, from not being fatigued, were sharper than his predecessor's, and he had scarcely glanced round the horizon, when he hailed the deck with words which roused everybody up-"a sail in sight!" "where away?" asked the officer of the watch. the brig's head was now tending on shore. "right over the starboard quarter, sir," was the answer. "call the captain, mr wildgrave," said the second lieutenant, who had charge of the deck, to the midshipman of the watch. "which way is she standing?" asked the officer. "directly down for us, sir," was the answer. in five seconds the captain himself was on deck, and the remainder of the officers soon after appeared. the first lieutenant went aloft with his glass, and on his return pronounced the stranger to be a large square-rigged vessel, but whether a man-of-war, a slaver, or an honest trader, it was difficult to say, though he was inclined to suppose her belonging to either of the two former classes, from the broad spread of canvas she showed. on she came towards them, probably ignorant of their vicinity, as, stripped as they were, they would not be perceived by her till long after she was seen by them. "what do you now make her out to be, mr collins?" inquired the commander of the first lieutenant, who had again returned, after a second trip to the masthead. "a large schooner, at all events, sir; and if i mistake not, she is the `espanto.'" "pipe all hands on deck, then, for we shall soon be discovered, and must make sail in chase." the men were in a moment at their stations, and in silence waited the orders of their commander. still the stranger came on, her sails slowly rising, as it were, from out of the ocean. she was now clearly seen from the deck of the "sylph." apparently there was a very bad lookout kept on board her, or else she was not the vessel they supposed, as otherwise the british cruiser must before this have been perceived by her. captain staunton and his officers stood watching her with almost breathless anxiety, with their glasses constantly at their eyes, ready to observe the first indication of any alteration in her course. nearer and nearer she approached, with studding-sails alow and aloft, on either side. suddenly they were observed to be taken in, and the vessel's course was altered to the southward. "aloft there, and make sail!" shouted the commander, in a quick tone. the men, with alacrity, sprang up the rigging; the sails were let fall, the tacks were sheeted home, and in a minute the "sylph," under a spread of canvas, was standing on a bowline in chase of the stranger. the spanish maiden. we must now shift our scene to a different part of the world, and to a period much antecedent to that of which we have hitherto been speaking. the spot to which we allude is on the eastern coast of south america, in the northern part of that vast territory colonised by the inhabitants of spain. there is a beautiful bay, or rather gulf, surrounded by lofty and picturesque cliffs, with deep ravines running up between them and several _haciendas_, or large farm-houses, on the surrounding ground, generally picturesquely situated, with a view of the sea in the distance. several vessels lay at anchor, proudly pre-eminent among which was a frigate, from whose peak the ensign of great britain floated in the breeze. some way inland was a mansion of considerable size, though only one story, surrounded with deep verandas--the style of architecture general in the country. it stood at the head of a ravine, towards which the windows of its principal rooms opened, so that the inhabitants enjoyed a fine view of cliffs and rocks, and trees of every form and hue, between which a sparkling torrent found its way to the ocean, which was seen beyond the shipping in the harbour. in a room within the house, a beautiful girl was seated close to the window, but she looked not on the scene without. her eyes were turned downwards, for at her feet knelt a youth; his glance met hers; and there was a wildness in his look, an expression of pain on his brow, which seemed to demand her pity. he was dressed in the british uniform, the single epaulet on his shoulder betokening that he held the rank of lieutenant; but his complexion was swarthy in the extreme, and his tongue spoke with facility the language of spain. "hear me, beloved one!" he exclaimed, passionately pressing her hand to his lips. "my ship sails hence in a few days, but i cannot tear myself from you. for your sake i will quit my profession, my country, and the thing men call honour, and will run the risk of death, if i am retaken,--all--all for your sake. do you love me, dearest one?" the girl smiled faintly, and her eyes filled with tears. he again pressed her hand to his lips. "yes, yes; i feel that i am blessed, indeed," he continued in the same tone. "but you must conceal me, beloved one. my life is in your hands. there will be a strict search made for me in every direction when i am missed. you will hear vile tales invented to induce those who might be sheltering me to give me up, but believe them not. will you promise to be my preserver, my guardian angel, my idol, and i will live but to show my gratitude?" where is the woman's heart which could resist such an appeal? the maiden's doubts and hesitations were gradually disappearing. "but we have seen little of each other, senor. your love for a poor girl like me cannot be so strong as for my sake to make you give up all men hold most dear. the sacrifice is surely not worth the price. i do not even know your name." "call me juan, then," he answered. "but if my fiery, ardent love meets no return, i will quit you; though, perchance, to suffer death. on board yonder accursed ship i cannot live. i am hated there; and hate in return." "oh, no, senor! i will not expose you to such danger," answered the maiden. "i have heard sad stories of that ship. even yesterday, it is said, one of the officers murdered another, and that the murderer has fled into the country." the young man started and turned pale, but instantly recovering himself, he looked up affectionately into her countenance. "but do you believe the tale?" he asked. "i cannot but believe, senor," she answered; "one of our slaves saw the murdered man on the beach where he fell, and the dagger sticking in his bosom." "but how can you suppose from that circumstance that an englishman did the deed." "because the dagger was such as the young officers wear," answered the girl; "and they were seen walking together." "know you the name, then, of the supposed murderer?" he asked. "i could not pronounce it if i did," she said. "it matters not--but believe not the tale--at all events, you would not believe me guilty of such a deed?" "oh, heavens, certainly not!" she replied, casting a glance which told plainly the secret of her heart. he saw that the victory was gained, and clasping her to his bosom, he urged her to form a plan for his concealment. "no one saw me approach the house," he observed, "so you will not be suspected; yet hasten, for should i now be observed, our difficulties would be increased." where woman's wit is sharpened by love, she finds no difficulties in serving him she loves. in a short time the stranger was concealed within the roof of the mansion, where she might, without exciting suspicion, constantly communicate with him. juanetta, having thus obeyed the impulse of her heart, returned to her seat near the window to meditate on the act she had performed, and the responsible office she had undertaken. "yet who is the stranger to whom i have given my heart?" she thought; "he loves me, surely, or he would not tell me so; and i love him--he is so handsome, so eloquent--he narrates adventures so surprising--he has done such daring deeds. it is strange, too, that he should seek to leave the ship, and that another officer should have committed a murder--oh, horrible! what fierce, bad men those on board must be, except my juan!" poor girl! she was young, loving, and ignorant of the wickedness in the world, or she would have suspected even him. her meditations were interrupted by the appearance of her father, accompanied by the alcalde, and two officers in british uniforms. they were conversing earnestly as they passed the widow, and they thus did not observe her. "there can be no doubt of it, senor," observed the alcalde to one of the english officers: "the murder must have been committed by him--his flight proves it." "where can he have concealed himself?" said the officer. "i would give a high reward to whoever discovers him, for such a crime must not go unpunished." "he must still be wandering about near the coast, for without a horse-and i cannot learn that any person has supplied him with one--he cannot have escaped into the interior. the scouts also i sent out bring no intelligence of him." on hearing these words juanetta turned pale, for dreadful suspicions crossed her mind; but she had vowed to protect the stranger, and she felt the necessity of appearing calm. she had scarcely time to compose herself before her father and his guests entered the apartment. refreshments were ordered, and as she was obliged to busy herself in performing the duties of a hostess, her agitation was not observed. during the repast she listened eagerly to gain further information, but what she heard only served to increase her doubts and fears. at length her father, telling her that he would soon return, took his departure with his guests. unhappy juanetta! she dared not believe what yet her reason told her was too true. left alone, she burst into tears. they afforded some relief to her aching heart, and when calmness had again returned, she hastened to the place where she had concealed her dangerous guest. as she went, she resolved to tell him that she would see him no more, yet to assure him that her promise given, he was safe while under her father's roof. she thought she would confess all that had passed to her father, and trusting to his generosity, entreat him to aid her in favouring the escape of the suspected criminal. fortunate for her had she been firm in her resolve. alas! that passion should too often triumph over the dictates of reason! yet who can fathom the deep well of a woman's heart? surely not she herself, while it remains free from the rubbish, the wickedness, the knowledge of the world, those things which choke it up and foul its pure waters. juan lay sleeping on the hard floor, yet so lightly, that he started the moment she slowly raised the trap-door which opened into the chamber, and grasping a pistol on which his hand had rested, he sprang to his feet. when he saw who was his visitor, his glance became less fierce, but still he did not quit his hold of his weapon. he was about to speak, but she, placing her finger to her mouth, signified to him to be silent till she had carefully closed the place of ingress. "i have come, senor, to bid you prepare for instant flight." she spoke in a low tone, and her voice faltered. "you cannot remain here in safety, for i have heard dreadful stories, and i feel sure you will be sought for here. they cannot be true; i know they cannot; but yet i wish they had not been spoken." "should all the world desert me, my juanetta will still believe me true," exclaimed the young man as he approached her and knelt at her feet. "do not credit those tales, dearest; they are told by my foes and tyrants to destroy me; but my vengeance will yet alight on their heads. yet what care i what they they say or do while you, sweet angel, are my protector?" he took the maiden's hand, and she did not withdraw it. he pressed her hand to his lips, and his imploring glance met her eyes, already suffused with tears. she smiled, for she could not believe him false; that youth with his gallant air and bold look; crime cannot be an inhabitant of a figure so noble, she thought. an arch-traitor was within the garrison, and the deceiver was victorious over the simple maiden. she dared not remain long in his company, lest her absence might betray her guest. to one person alone did she confide her secret, a black slave who had attended her from a child, and loved her faithfully. her word was his law, and mauro promised that no harm should befall the stranger. his own conceptions of right and wrong were not very clear, nor did he make very minute inquiries as to the truth of the story his mistress told him. he believed that the englishman had been ill-treated, and had avenged himself, and he was acute enough to discover that his young mistress loved the handsome stranger. he therefore considered it his duty to please her to the utmost of his power. the deserter's dream. left again alone, juan's weary limbs sank once more beneath the power of sleep; but though the frame was still, the mind refused to be at rest. he dreamed that he was again a boy, young, innocent, and happy; but yet all the time a consciousness of the bitter truth mocked the vain illusion, like some dark phantom hovering over him; he felt and knew that the dream was false, still it seemed vivid and clear like the reality. he thought that he lay at the feet of his fond and gentle mother, while his proud father smiled at his youthful gambols. it was in a princely hall, decked with all the luxury wealth can supply; other children were there, but he was the eldest and best beloved, the inheritor of almost boundless riches--of title and power. he had early learned his own importance; foolish nurses had not been slow to give him the baneful lesson; and while his parents believed him to be all their hearts could wish, the noxious seeds were already taking root. years rolled on; he had gained knowledge at school, and beneath the care of his tutor, but, as regards self-government or religious feelings, he was still less educated than the poorest peasant on his father's broad domains. at last the truth had burst on his father's mind. his son was passionate, headstrong, self-willed, and, worse, deceitful. every means of reclaiming him had been tried in vain, and he had determined to send him to sea under a strict captain, who promised to curb, if not to break, his spirit, if severity could influence him. young hernan stood before his father, while his mother sat overpowered with grief. the carriage was waiting which was to convey him to portsmouth. he was unmoved, for filial affection had been swallowed up by selfishness, and he fancied that he was about to lead a life of freedom and independence. he had yet to learn what a man-of-war was like. his mother pressed him to her heart, and his father strove to bless him as he turned to quit the room, for he was still his son. the carriage rolled off, and in a few hours he was on board the ship which was to be his home and school for three long years. he learned many a lesson, it is true, but the great one came too late for him to profit by it. the first three years of his naval career passed by, and many a wild act had he committed, such as had often brought him under the censure of his superiors. that he was unreformed his father felt too surely convinced, and he was accordingly again sent to sea. he was no longer a boy, and the irregularities of that age had grown into the vices of manhood. yet among his equals he had friends, and, knowing their value, he took care to cultivate them. the most intimate was edward staunton, his superior in age by two years--one whose generous spirit, believing that he had discovered noble qualities in his companion, longed to win him back to virtue. together they paced the deck in the midnight watch, and spoke of their future prospects, till even hernan believed that he had resolved to amend. there are calm and often happy moments in a sailor's life, when all the dangers of their floating home, except the watch on deck, are wrapped in sleep; and then many a youth pours into his attentive shipmate's ears the tale of his love, his hopes and fears, and pictures the beauty of the girl he has left behind--the lady of his heart, with whom he fondly fancies he shall some day wed. such a tale did staunton tell; and hernan listened carelessly at first, but afterwards with interest, as the ardent lover, delighting in the picture he was conjuring up, described the surpassing beauty of his mistress. "then you must introduce me to your lovely blanche, and let me judge whether she is as fair as you paint her," said hernan to his companion; and staunton, guileless himself, promised to gratify his wish. "i shall not allow you to break your word, remember," added hernan. "never fear," answered staunton, laughing. "but see what a sudden change has come over the sky while we have been speaking! we shall have a reef in the topsails before many minutes are out." it was true. when they began their watch the sky was studded with a million stars, the dark sea was calm, and a gentle breeze filled the sails of the noble frigate. now wild clouds were coursing each other across the arch of heaven, the light foam flew over the ocean, and the ship heeled over to the rising blast. scarcely had he spoken, when the voice of the officer of the watch roused his sleeping men with the order to furl the topgallant-sails quickly, followed by that to take a reef in the topsails. hernan's duty had led him aloft. he was careless in keeping a firm hold. the ship gave a sudden lurch, and he found himself struggling in the wild waters. he could swim, but the fall had numbed his limbs, and the ship flew past him. despair was seizing him, when he heard the cry which arose from the deck of "a man overboard?" echoed by a hundred voices. he was sinking beneath the waves, when he felt a friendly hand grasping his arm, and once more he rose to the surface of the water, and the voice of edward staunton cheered him to fresh exertions. he saw, too, the bright light of the life-buoy, which floated at a short distance only from them. it was a fearful thing, though, to be left thus alone on that stormy sea, for the dim outline of the frigate was scarcely visible, and she might be unable to fetch again, while the light continued burning, the spot where they were. for his sake, staunton had thus risked his life. with great exertions staunton dragged him to the life-buoy, and hanging on to it, they anxiously watched the approach of the frigate. "the boat has been swamped, and we shall be left to perish miserably here," exclaimed hernan. "curses on my fate!" "no," cried staunton; "hark, i hear the shouts of the people in the boat pulling towards us. the frigate must have gone far to leeward before she could be hove-to to lower one." again the shouts were heard, and a dark object emerged from the obscurity which surrounded them. in a few minutes they were on board, and scarcely was the boat hoisted in than down came the tempest with tenfold fury, and vain would then have been any attempt to save him had he still been struggling in the waves. he was profuse in his professions of gratitude to staunton, and he thought himself sincere. the frigate returned home, her crew were paid off, and staunton and his friend received their promotion. "and now, staunton, you must keep to your word, and introduce me to your beautiful friend, miss blanche d'aubigne," said hernan, after they had been some time on shore, and had met by chance in london. "gladly," answered edward; "i have told her all about you, and she will be most glad to see you." so they went together to the village where the fair girl resided; it was at no great distance from the country-seat of sir hernan daggerfeldt, the father of edward's friend. staunton had won his promotion by his own exertions; and another step, his commander's rank, was to be gained before he could hope to make blanche his bride. such was the decree of her father, who had given an unwilling consent to their union, and he felt that he had no right to murmur at the decision. a short stay on shore was all he could hope to enjoy, before he must again go afloat for two or three more weary years; but she was still very young, and he confided in her truth and love. this hernan knew; he was surprised and delighted when first introduced to miss d'aubigne, for her beauty far surpassed his expectations. he thought her far more lovely than any one he had ever met, when, with artless simplicity, she received him as the friend of her betrothed. edward went to sea, and hernan took up his abode at his father's seat. every week his visits to the village of darlington grew more frequent, and blanche unsuspectingly received him with pleasure, while her father, who knew his prospects, welcomed him cordially. hernan knew that blanche looked on him as a friend of her intended husband, and he at first thought not of inquiring into his own feelings regarding her. soon, however, a fierce passion sprang up in addition to the simple admiration he at first had felt. indeed, he scarcely attempted to conceal it; but she was too pure-minded and unsuspecting to perceive the existence of the feelings she had inspired. thus matters went on till even she could no longer deceive herself as to hernan's real feelings. horrified at the discovery, she refused to see him more, and hernan saw that he must make a bold stroke or lose her forever. he called falsehood and treachery to his aid. he went to her father; he spoke of his own ardent love, of his future wealth, of the position he could offer; then he continued to express his regret that edward, his friend, was unworthy of her, that he had expressed his anxiety to break off the connection, but was unwilling to wound her feelings by doing so abruptly, and therefore intended to write, when he had reached his station, to free her from her engagement. mr d'aubigne listened, and believed what he wished to be true; but blanche was long incredulous, and refused to credit the tale of her intended's disloyalty. at last, however, the cruel letter came; it was enclosed in one to hernan. it spoke of the impolicy of early engagements, of the misery of married poverty, of the difficulty of governing the affections, and of the danger of wedding when love has begun to decay. hernan watched the effect of the letter, and congratulated himself on its success; still blanche disbelieved her senses, but dared not utter her suspicions. hernan knew, too, that it was so, yet he trusted in the versatility of his talents to bring his schemes to a successful issue. her father's influence was exerted in his favour, and blanche was told that she must discard her former lover from her heart. she had loved too truly, however, to obey the command, and she determined not to wed another till she had heard from his own lips that he was indeed changed. hernan daggerfeldt knelt at the feet of blanche d'aubigne. he had seized her hand, and was pressing it with rapture to his lips, while she in vain endeavoured to withdraw it. "rise, sir, rise," she said; "you wrong me--you wrong him who is away-your friend, the preserver of your life. while he lives, i am his, and his alone!" "i do not wrong him," he answered. "his nature is fickle, and if he no longer loves you, will not woman's pride teach you to forget him?" "i know not that he no longer loves me," she replied. "did not his letter convince you?" he asked. "that letter! no, sir," she replied, rising proudly from her seat, and a smile of unwonted bitterness curling her lip. "that letter was a forgery." "on my sacred word, on my soul, it was not!" he cried, vehemently. "it is you who wrong me and my devoted love. be mine, and let me enjoy the only heaven i seek. if i speak not the truth, may the powers above strike me this moment dead at your feet?" blanche shuddered at his words. at that instant a dark form seemed to rise up between them, and to gaze with threatening aspect at hernan, while it shielded blanche from him. soon it assumed the form of edward staunton, and beckoning hernan to follow, slowly receded from the room. even the deceiver trembled, and daring not to disobey, followed the phantom. it led him through dark chambers, beneath roaring waterfalls, along dizzy heights, whence the sea-birds could scarce be seen in the depths below, on the wild shore, where the fierce waves dashed with terrific fury, while the tempest raged, and the lightnings flashed around his head, and then with a derisive shriek which sounded high above the furious turmoil, disappeared amid the boiling ocean. "such, traitor, shall be thy fate!" were the words it spoke. again hernan dreamed that blanche had promised to be his,--a prize bought at the cost of further perjury. edward for long had been unheard of; he was still a rover in far-off climes. mr d'aubigne was satisfied and rejoiced at the thoughts of finding a wealthy husband for his daughter. hernan was with his intended bride when a messenger arrived, breathless with haste, to summon him to the deathbed of his parent. he hurried thither to listen to a tale the old man falteringly whispered into his ear; it was enough to freeze up the current in his veins. a stigma was on his birth, and instant precautions were necessary, or the fatal secret would be discovered which would consign him to poverty and disgrace. "you are my child," said the proud baronet, "yet for long my wife had borne me none; at length one came into the world and died. you took its place, and my wife believed you to be her own offspring. the change was ill-managed, and the deceit is discovered by one who is my enemy, and will be yours. i fancied that no one knew it, till some years ago he came and convinced me that he was aware of the truth. he then told me that should you be worthy to succeed to my rank and fortune, the secret should die with him; but if not, my first lawful child, whom he insisted on educating under his own inspection, should be declared to have his rights. though the terms seemed hard, i was obliged to yield to his demands, and have ever since been his slave. by his orders you were sent to sea, and will be compelled shortly again to go; and by his orders i have made you acquainted with the dreadful tale i have now told you. i know him well, and you too must become his slave. he will probably insist on your again going to sea, and you must obey him, or rue the consequences." scarcely stopping to close his father's eyes, who died shortly after this disclosure, hernan hurried off to endeavour to propitiate the arbitrator of his destiny. the old man was inflexible. he insisted on his forthwith returning to sea, and refused to sanction his marriage with blanche. hernan had good cause to suspect that his character was seen through; he dared not disobey. his appointment to the frigate soon arrived, and framing an excuse to blanche, he prepared for his departure. blanche received the account without any regret, for though she was prepared to obey her father, she did not love hernan, as he well knew. her heart was still with one whom she had been told was false to her. the frigate on board which hernan daggerfeldt was the junior lieutenant sailed for the coast of south america. hernan felt that he was no favourite with his brother-officers; his fierce temper and overbearing manner was one cause, while his constant scoffs at religion and honour was another. when off rio, they fell in with a frigate carrying despatches to england. it was a dead calm, and a boat from her was sent on board them to learn intelligence from home. two officers were in the boat; one was staunton. hernan in vain endeavoured to avoid him. staunton had a thousand questions to ask, which hernan might be able to answer respecting his beloved blanche. was she well? had she received his letters?--none of hers had reached him. hernan made the most plausible answers he could invent. they spoke in the presence of two of his brother-officers, and one of them, an old friend of staunton's, knew the truth. accordingly, drawing him aside, he told him at once that he believed hernan had been speaking falsehoods. staunton's indignation knew no bounds, and he taxed hernan with his duplicity and falsehood, though the sanctity of the quarter-deck prevented him from proceeding to extremities. hernan defended himself from the accusation, though he felt that he was discovered, and he determined to revenge himself on the man who had unmasked him to staunton. he, however, bided his time; but he suspected that by some means or other more of his secrets might be known to his shipmate. the frigate had been for some time on the coast of america, when, receiving some damage in a heavy gale, she put into the harbour of--to refit. she lay there for some time, and the officers were constantly, when duty allowed, on shore. it was a dark night, when hernan, accompanied by young selwyn, the friend of staunton, was returning, after an excursion into the country, on board. they had left their horses at the town, and were walking along the beach on foot; young selwyn thoughtlessly alluded to staunton and blanche d'aubigne, and while he spoke the spirit of a demon entered into hernan daggerfeldt's heart. a sharp cry awoke the stillness of night--a deed had been done no power on earth could recall. he fled he knew not whither; vipers seemed twining round his heart; burning coals were raining on his head, and while heavy weights were clogging his limbs, a thousand fierce bloodhounds urged him to fly. he awoke, the perspiration standing in large drops on his brow, while he gasped for breath; yet there he still lay in the loft where juanetta had concealed him. was all that had occurred an empty dream, or was it the re-acting of a dreadful reality? the flight. the following morning juan, or rather hernan daggerfeldt, was awoke by the entrance of senor ribiera's black slave, with a basket of provisions. "why does not your mistress come to me herself?" inquired hernan, who dreaded being abandoned by the only human being in whom he could trust. "donna juanetta is with her father, and till he goes out she cannot come to see you," answered the slave. "he is a stern man, and were he to discover that you are here without his leave, and that his daughter loved you, he would kill you without ceremony. ah, senor! you do not know what these spanish gentlemen are capable of." "well, you must take care that he does not discover i am here till that cursed ship in the harbour has sailed away; and now listen to me--what is your name, though?" "mauro, at your service, senor," said the slave. "there, mauro--there is a piece of gold. you shall have a larger piece by and by. it will go towards buying your freedom." "my freedom!" muttered the african. "what does that mean?--ah, yes, i know. it would be of no value to me now. had it come when i was yet young, and could have returned to those i loved across the ocean, i should have prized it. now they are all dead, and those i love best are in this house. my mistress told me to do your bidding. what is it you require of me, senor?" "first, i wish you to procure me a suit of spanish clothes, fit for a gentleman to appear in, and then you must take this uniform, coat, and hat, and as soon as it is dark, carry them down to the seashore, and place them as if the waves had thrown them there. they will certainly be discovered, and it will appear that i have been drowned, and then no further search will be made after me." "a very good idea, senor," said mauro, rubbing his hands with pleasure, for he was delighted to be employed in a scheme by which those in authority, whom he looked upon as oppressors, might be deceived. such is the feeling of slaves in general. while her father took his siesta, juanetta visited her prisoner, and hernan employed the time in endeavouring to convince her of his love for her, and his innocence of the crime of which he was suspected. in both he succeeded too well. in the evening mauro returned with the suit of clothes he had purchased; and hernan having exchanged them for his own, pierced the latter with his sword, and deliberately drawing blood from his arm, soaked them in it. mauro, who well understood what he was to do, wrapped them up in a bundle, and as soon as it was dark carried them off. we will pass over several days, during which daggerfeldt remained concealed without any one in the house suspecting that he was in the garret. at last one morning mauro came in rubbing his hands with delight. "you are free, senor, you are free!" he exclaimed; "the big ship with the many guns is even now sailing out of the harbour, and all you have got to do now is to come down to beg senor ribiera's pardon for living so long in his house without his leave, and to marry his daughter." "curses go with her!" ejaculated hernan, fiercely. "i will still wreak my vengeance on some of those who sail on board her. but tell me, mauro, did your lady say i might venture into her father's presence?" "not exactly, senor, and perhaps it might be as well to prepare the old gentleman for your appearance, as he yet believes, like the rest of the world, that you are food for the sharks." "then, my good mauro, go and urge her to come here to concert the best way to release me. i pant once more to stretch my limbs on the open shore, and to breathe the pure air of heaven." some time elapsed after the slave had gone to fulfil his mission before juanetta appeared. she then came with a sad countenance and tears in her eyes. "oh, senor!" she said, "the ship has sailed, and i hoped that the news would have made us both happy; but, alas! when i told my father what i had done, and how i had preserved your life from those tyrants, he stormed and raved, and declared that i had behaved very wickedly, and that he would deliver you up to the authorities. fortunately i did not tell him that you were still here; but, as mauro had cautioned me, i led him to suppose that you had made your escape up the country." "that was a happy idea of yours, my juanetta," said daggerfeldt. "your father must in some way be gained to our wishes. you are his only child, and he is enormously rich, you say--plenty of gold stored up in bars in his house. stay, i must think over the subject. sit down by me, and i will unfold my plans." he was silent for some time, and then he continued, while juanetta, who was incapable of fathoming the depths of his deceit, listened to him without suspicion. "now, juanetta, dear, you must not be startled by the plan i am going to propose. from what you tell me, your father is prejudiced against me, and will not willingly give his consent to our marriage, so we must marry first, and ask his forgiveness afterwards. he will then, i have no doubt, pardon us, and give us as much gold as we may require. now, as i have no money, and no priest will marry us without, we must contrive to borrow some of his. we can return it afterwards, you know. i propose, therefore, that you show me some night where he keeps his gold, and then i will take a little of it, as much as we may require, and then we will fly together to the nearest place where we can find a priest to unite us. shall we not do so, dearest? the plan may seem to you dangerous and wrong, but let no fears alarm you. we will afterwards explain our motives, and the old man will forgive you." poor juanetta, had she known this world and the wickedness in it, would have flown with horror from the betrayer; but she was ignorant of its evil ways--she listened and hesitated. no arguments which sophistry could invent were left untried. the deceiver was victorious. that night the keys of the old man's money-chests were stolen from beneath his pillow. the following morning he found them where he had placed them, and, unsuspecting, did not think of counting his hoarded gold. his daughter dared not again speak to him of the stranger she had preserved. he believed that he had long ago escaped into the interior, and forbore to make further inquiries about him. daggerfeldt was no longer an inhabitant of his house. a foreign merchant, of considerable wealth at command, had arrived, it was said, from the interior, and had taken up his abode in the town. he had become the purchaser of a large schooner, which was taking in a cargo of goods for the african coast. don manuel ribiera, on hearing this, invited the stranger to his house, for he himself was a dealer in slaves, and wished to make some arrangements respecting the return cargo. on the unexpected appearance of the stranger, donna juanetta started; but her presence of mind quickly returned, for she felt the importance of discretion. her father observed her momentary confusion, and apologised to his guest, attributing it to her being unaccustomed to receive strangers. soon afterwards, some business called senor ribiera from the room, and juanetta was left alone with their guest. "oh, juan, how could you venture here?" she exclaimed to the pretended merchant, who was no other than daggerfeldt. "my father will discover you, and your ruin and mine must follow." "no fear, dearest. he is blinded by the prospect of profit," answered hernan. "he has, too, scarcely seen me before, and then only in uniform. it was also necessary to run some risks to gain our ends. i have made all the necessary arrangements, and this night you are to be mine. the cost, however, has been considerable, and we must borrow a little more from your father's money-chests to pay the priest who is to unite us." daggerfeldt had scarcely arranged his plans with his credulous dupe when senor ribiera returned. as may be supposed, he was induced to arrange a plan to dispose of his slaves on his return on terms highly advantageous to the old slave-dealer; and after being entertained magnificently, he was conducted to his sleeping apartment. instead of retiring to rest, daggerfeldt employed himself in loading his pistols and listening attentively for the arrival of some one apparently, but not a sound disturbed the silence of the night. at last, losing patience, he opened his door, and was met by juanetta. the poor girl was pale and trembling. "here are the keys," she said; "but, oh, senor, i do not like this work--surely it is very wicked!" "pretty fool," he answered, abruptly, "it is too late to recede now. there is nothing to alarm you. wait in this room till i return." saying this, he was about to leave her, when footsteps were heard approaching the house. he listened attentively. "it is right," he observed; "those are some people i have engaged to assist us in our flight." just then some men sprang into the room through the open window. poor juanetta uttered a cry of terror, but it was instantly silenced by daggerfeldt, who ordered two of the men to take charge of her while the rest followed him to the chamber of don ribiera. the unhappy girl listened, horror-struck and bewildered. there was a cry and a groan, and soon afterwards daggerfeldt returned, accompanied by the men carrying several heavy chests between them. "onward," said the traitor, "and you, my fair lady, must accompany us. the ship is waiting to bear us to far-off lands, where you may become my bride." the next morning, the new slave schooner was seen in the offing, and when people went to the house of don ribiera, he was found dead in his bed, his money-chests were gone, and his daughter had fled, while his slaves were only just awaking from a heavy sleep, for which none of them could account. mauro, too, had disappeared, and all the watch-dogs were dead. chapter fourteen. the black slaver (continued)--the chase--the slaver--the capture--the escape--the pursuit. the chase. we left her britannic majesty's brig "sylph" in chase of a strange sail on the coast of africa. the wind was from the westward, and she was standing on a bowline to the southward, with the coast clearly seen broad on the lee-beam. captain staunton ordered every expedient he could think of to be tried to increase the speed of his vessel, for the stranger was evidently a very fast sailer, though it was at first difficult to say whether or not she was increasing her distance from them. at all events, the british crew soon saw that it would be hopeless to expect to come up with the stranger before dark, for the sun was just sinking below the horizon, and the thick mists were already rising over the wooded shore, and yet they appeared to be no nearer to her than they were when they first made sail in chase. it was a magnificent sailing breeze, just sufficient for both vessels to carry their topgallant-sails and royals without fear of springing their spars, and the sea was perfectly smooth, merely rippled over by the playful wind. indeed, as the two vessels glided proudly along over the calm waters, they appeared rather to be engaged in some friendly race than anxious to lead each other to destruction. all the officers of the "sylph" were on deck with their glasses constantly at their eyes, as the last rays of the sun tinged the royals of the chase, and so clearly was every spar and rope defined through that pure atmosphere, that it was difficult to believe that she was not within range of their guns. captain staunton and his first lieutenant walked together on the weather-side of the deck. "do you think she is the `espanto,' mr collins?" asked the captain. "i have no doubt about it, sir," answered the officer addressed. "i watched her narrowly when we chased her off loanda the last time she was on the coast, and i pulled round her several times when she lay in the harbour of st. jago da cuba, just a year and a half ago." "she has had a long run of iniquity," said the captain; "two years our cruisers have been on the look-out for her, and have never yet been able to overhaul her." "that daggerfeldt must be a desperate villain, if report speaks true," observed the lieutenant; "i think, sir, you seemed to say you once knew him." "i did, to my cost," answered captain staunton; "that man's life has been a tissue of treachery and deceit from his earliest days. he once disgraced our noble service. he murdered a shipmate and ran from his ship on the coast of america. it was reported for some time that he was dead, by his clothes having been found torn and bloody on the shore, and his family, fortunately for them, believed the story. it was, however, afterwards discovered that he had been sheltered by a spanish girl, and, in gratitude for his preservation, he carried her off, robbed her father of all his wealth, and either frightened him to death or smothered him. the unhappy girl has, it is said, ever since sailed with him, and it is to be hoped she is not aware of the enormity of his guilt. pirate and slaver, he has committed every atrocity human nature is capable of." "a very perfect scoundrel, in truth, sir," answered mr collins. "it was said, too, i remember, that he was going to marry a very beautiful girl in england. what an escape for her!" "no, he was not going to marry her!" exclaimed the captain, with unusual vehemence. "her father, perhaps, wished it, but she would never have consented. collins, you are my friend, and i will tell you the truth. that lady, blanche d'aubigne, was engaged to me, and never would have broken her faith to me while she believed me alive. by a series of forgeries, daggerfeldt endeavoured to persuade her that i was false to her, though she would not believe him. on my return home she is to become my wife. we were to have married directly i got my promotion, but i was so immediately sent out here that i was able to spend but one day in her society. i wished to have secured her a pension in case this delightful climate should knock me on the head, but she would not hear of it. poor girl, i have left her what little fortune i possess, collins; i could not do less. those who live on shore at ease can't say we enjoy too much of the pleasures of home, or don't earn the queen's biscuit. bless her majesty!" "i don't know that, sir. there are, i hear, though i never fell in with any of them, a set of lying traitors at home, who say we are no better than pirates, and want to do away with the navy altogether. if they were to succeed in their roguish projects, there would be an end of old england altogether, say i." "they never will succeed, collins, depend upon that. there is still too much sense left in the country; but if her majesty's government were to employ her cruisers in any other part of the world than on this pestiferous coast, the cause of humanity would benefit by the change. for every prize we capture, ten escape, and our being here scarcely raises the price of slaves in the cuban and brazilian markets five dollars a head; while the spaniards and portuguese, notwithstanding their treaties, do all they can to favour the traffic. do we gain on the chase, do you think, collins?" "not a foot, i fear, sir," answered the lieutenant. "that brig is a fast craft, and though i don't believe, as some of the people do, that the skipper has signed a contract with davy jones, she is rightly called by them the `black slaver.'" "if the breeze freshens, we may overhaul her, but if not, she may double on us in the dark, and again get away," observed the captain. "take care a bright look-out is kept for'ard." "ay, ay, sir," answered the lieutenant, repeating the order and adjusting his night-glass; "she hasn't altered her course, at all events." by this time daylight had totally disappeared, although a pale crescent moon in the clear sky afforded light sufficient for objects to be distinguished at some distance. few of the officers turned in, but the watch below were ordered to their hammocks to recruit their strength for the services they might be required to perform on the morrow, as captain staunton had determined, should the wind fail, to attack the chase in his boats. when the enemy is well-armed and determined, this a very dangerous operation, and in the present instance there could be no doubt that he who commanded the "black slaver" would not yield without a desperate resistance. lookouts were stationed at the mastheads as well as forward, and every eye was employed in endeavouring to keep her in sight--no easy task with the increasing darkness--for a light mist was gradually filling the atmosphere, and the moon itself was sinking into the ocean. the breeze, however, appeared to be increasing; the brig felt its force, and heeled gracefully over to it as the water bubbled and frothed against her bows. "what are the odds we don't catch her after all?" said young wildgrave to his messmate; "i hate these long chases, when one never comes up with the enemy." "so do i," answered his companion. "but to tell you the truth, i have a presentiment that we shall come up with her this time, and bring her to action too. she has escaped us twice before, and the third time will, i think, be fatal to her. by-the-by, where is she though?" "fore-yard, there!" sang out the first lieutenant, "can you see the chase?" "i did a moment ago, sir;--no, sir, i can see her nowhere." a similar answer was returned from the other lookouts. she was nowhere visible. the slaver. the "black slaver" well deserved her name. her hull was black, without the usual relief of a coloured ribbon; her masts and spars were of the same ebon hue, her cargo was black, and surely her decks were dark as the darkest night. she was a very large vessel, certainly upwards of three hundred tons, and also heavily armed with a long brass gun amidships, and ten long nines in battery, besides small brass swivel-guns mounted on her quarter, to aid in defending her against an attack in boats. her crew was composed of every nation under the sun, for crime makes all men brothers, but brothers who, cainlike, were ready any moment to imbrue their hands in each other's blood; and their costume was as varied as their language--a mixture of that of many nations. a mongrel spanish, however, was the language in which all orders were issued, as being that spoken by the greater number of the people. she was a very beautiful and powerful vessel, and all the arrangements on board betokened strict attention to nautical discipline. for more than two years she had run her evil career with undeserved success, and her captain and owner was reputed to be a wealthy man, already in possession of several estates in cuba. slaving was his most profitable and safe occupation, mixed up with a little piracy, as occasion offered, without fear of detection. several slavers had unaccountably disappeared, which had certainly not been taken by english cruisers, and others had returned to the coast complaining that they had been robbed of their slaves by a large armed schooner, which had put on board a few bales of coloured cottons, with an order to them to go back and take in a fresh cargo of human beings. the "espanto" was more than suspected of being the culprit; but she was always so disguised that it was difficult to bring the accusation home to her, while they themselves being illegally employed, could obtain no redress in a court of law. she had for some time been cruising, as usual, in the hopes of picking up a cargo without taking the trouble of looking into the coast for it, when, weary of waiting, and being short of water and provisions, the captain determined to run the risk of procuring one by the usual method. from the ruse practised by the "sylph," she was not seen by his lookouts till he was nearly close up to her. he was in no way alarmed, however, for he recognised the british man-of-war, and knowing the respective rate of sailing of the two vessels, felt certain, if the wind held, to be able to walk away from her. to make certain what she was, he had stood on some time after he had first seen her, a circumstance which had, as we mentioned, somewhat surprised captain staunton and his officers. having ascertained that the sail inside of him was the "sylph," he hauled his wind, and making all sail, before an hour of the first watch had passed, aided by the darkness, he had completely run her out of sight. when he stood in he had been making for the pongos river; but being prevented from getting in there, he determined to run for the coanza river, some forty miles further to the south, before daybreak, and as the mouth is narrow, and entirely concealed by trees, he had many chances in his favour of remaining concealed there while the british man-of-war passed by. a slave-agent, also, of his resided in the neighbourhood, who would be able to supply him at the shortest notice, and at moderate prices, with a cargo of his fellow-beings. at this rendezvous he knew there would be a look-out for him, and that there were pilots ready to assist him in entering the river. "square the yards and keep her away, antonio," he sung out to his first mate, a ferocious-looking mulatto, who was conning the vessel. "we are just abreast of--point, and diogo, if he has his eyes open, ought to see us." the helm was kept up, the yards were squared, and the vessel stood stem on towards the shore. before long the dark line of a tree-fringed coast was visible, when she was again brought to the wind; her lower sails were furled, and she was hove-to under her topsails. "we must make a signal, or the lazy blacks will never find us out, senor captain," observed antonio to his chief. "yes, we must run the risk: we shall not be in before daylight if we do not, and the enemy will scarcely distinguish from what direction the report of the gun comes. be smart about it though." a gun from the lee quarter was accordingly discharged, the dull echoes from which were heard rebounding along the shore, and directly afterwards a blue-light was fired, the bright flame giving a spectre-like appearance to the slaver and her evil-doing crew. they might well have been taken for one of those phantom barks said to cruise about the ocean either to warn mariners of coming danger or to lure them to destruction. soon afterwards a small light was seen to burst out, as it seemed, from the dark line, and to glide slowly over the water towards them. gradually it increased, and as it approached nearer, it was seen to proceed from a fire burning in the bow of a large canoe pulled by a dozen black fellows. when it came alongside, two of them scrambled on board, and recognising the captain, welcomed him to the coast. their language was a curious mixture of spanish, portuguese, english, and african. "ah, senor captain, berry glad you et espanto, come esta nocha, viento es favoravel, for run up de river diogo--me vos on the look-out you, sabe." having thus delivered himself, the chief pilot went aft to the helm with much the same air as one of his european brethren, habited in flushing coat and tarpaulin hat, although the only garment he boasted was a blue shirt, secured at the waist by a piece of spun-yarn, and a red handkerchief bound round his head. "up with the helm, then square away the yards!" sung out the captain, and the vessel, under the direction of the negro, was standing dead on to the apparently unbroken line of dark shore. it required great confidence in the honesty and knowledge of the pilot for the crew not to believe that he was running the schooner on shore, for such a thing had been more than once before done. "remember," whispered antonio, as he passed him, "if the vessel touches, my pistol sends a ball through your head." "no tien duvida, senor, contremestre," answered quacko, quite unmoved by the threat, as being one to which he was well accustomed. "viento favoravel, rio fundo. have de anchor pronto to let go." the bowsprit of the schooner was now almost among the mangrove bushes. "stivordo!" sung out the pilot. a yellow line of sand was seen over her quarter. this seemed to spring up from the sea on either side, like dark, shapeless phantoms, eager to destroy the slaver's crew, the spirits of those their cruelty had sent from this world. taller and taller they grew, for so calmly did the vessel glide on, that she appeared not to move, yet the broad open sea was completely shut out from the view of those on board; a narrow dark line, in which the reflection of a star was here and there visible, was the only water seen as still, on the schooner moved. "bombordo!" sung out the pilot. the helm was put to port, and the schooner glided into another passage, her yards, as they were squared away or braced up to meet the alterations in her course, almost brushing the branches of the lofty trees. for some minutes more she ran on, till the stream grew suddenly wider, and a little bay, formed by a bend of the shore, appeared on the starboard hand, into which she glided. the anchor was let go, the topsails were furled, and so entirely was she concealed by the overhanging boughs, that a boat might have passed down the centre of the stream without seeing her. at dawn the next morning a busy scene was going on on board and round the slaver. her crew, aided by a number of negroes, were employed in setting up her rigging and fitting slave-decks, while several canoes were assisting her boats in bringing water and provisions alongside. thus they were employed without cessation for two days. there was no play, it was all hard, earnest work. it is a pity they were not labouring in a good cause instead of a bad one. in the mean time the king of --, as he was called, in reality the principal slave-dealer and greatest rogue in the district, was collecting the negroes who had been kidnapped by him or his allies, from whom he had bought them in the neighbouring provinces--some as they were quietly fishing in their canoes on the coast, others as they were seated beneath the shade of the palm-tree in their native forest, or were coming from the far interior with a load of oil or ivory, to sell to the nearest trader--untutored savages, who perhaps had never before seen the face of a white man, or the blue dancing ocean. it is no wonder that they paint the devil white, and believe the sea is the passage to his realms. eight hundred human beings were thus collected to be conveyed in that fell bark to the far west, there to wear out their lives in hopeless slavery. the greater part of the fourth day was spent in receiving half the number on board, and stowing them below. this operation was performed by men whose especial trade it is. the unhappy wretches are compelled to sit down with their legs bent under them, so closely packed that they cover but little more space than the length of their feet, between-decks, little more than a yard high; and thus they remain, bolted down to the decks, the whole voyage, a few only being allowed to come up at a time to be aired, while the smallest quantity of water possible is afforded them to quench their burning thirst. the capture. the work for the day was nearly concluded, and the captain of the slaver was walking by himself beneath the awning spread over the after-part of the deck, when he observed a canoe suddenly dart out of the main stream into the bay where the schooner lay concealed. it was soon alongside, when a black jumped on board. "senor capitan, you must be pronto," he said. "big man-of-war come, big canoe, mucho hombres, come up river." "ah, have they found me out?" muttered the captain to himself. "i'll give them a warm reception if they do come. very well, queebo," he said aloud, "now pull back and watch them narrowly. take care they don't see you, and come and report their movements to me." at a signal all the crew were summoned on board, the awning was handed, boarding-nettings were triced up, the guns were double-shotted and run out, and a thick screen of boughs was carried across the part of the bay so as still further to conceal the schooner from the eye of any stranger. two guns were also sent on shore and planted in battery, so as to command the entrance of the bay. every other precaution was likewise taken to avoid discovery; all fires were extinguished, and the blacks were ordered to remove from the neighbourhood. by the time these arrangements had been made, the scout returned to give notice that two boats had entered the river, and were exploring one of the numerous passages of the stream. the captain on this ordered the scout to remain on board, lest he might betray their whereabouts to the enemy. he had no wish to destroy the boats, as so doing would not benefit him; concealment, not fighting, was his object. when night, however, came on, he sent out the scout to gain further intelligence. scarcely had the man gone, when he returned, and noiselessly stepped on deck. "hist, senor, hist!" he whispered. "they are close at hand, little dreaming we are near them." "whereabouts?" inquired the captain. "on the other side of the long island which divides the middle from the southern stream," was the substance of the reply. "we'll attack them then, and either kill or make them all prisoners. they may be useful as hostages," muttered the captain, and calling antonio to him, he ordered him to man two boats with the most trustworthy of their people, and carefully to muffle the oars. this done, both boats left the schooner, under his command, in the direction indicated by the scout. they pulled across the channel to a thickly-wooded island indicated by the scout. the negro landed, and in a few minutes came back. "dere dey are, senor," he whispered; "you may kill all fast asleep; berry good time now; no make noise." on hearing this, the slavers, all of whom were armed to the teeth, advanced cautiously across the island, by a path with which queebo seemed well acquainted. the black pointed between the trees, and there was seen the head of a man, fast asleep in the stern-sheets of a boat. just then a light rustling noise was heard, and a figure was seen advancing close up to where the slavers were crouching down, ready for the command of their officer to fire. he advanced slowly, looking out for the very path apparently by which they had gained the spot. he reached within almost an arm's length of the captain. the impulse was irresistible; and before the stranger was aware any one was near him, he was felled to the ground, and a handkerchief was passed over his mouth, so that he could not utter a cry for help. two other men, who were doing duty as sentinels on shore, were in like manner surprised and gagged, without uttering a sound to alarm the rest. the slavers then advanced close up to the nearest boat, and pouring a volley from their deadly trabucos into her, killed or wounded nearly all her crew. a larger boat was moored at some little distance farther on, and her people being aroused by the firing, they at once shoved off into the stream, which the survivors of the other also succeeded in doing. they then opened a fire on the slavers, but sheltered as they were among the trees, it was ineffectual. the contest was kept up for some time; but reduced in strength as the crews of the boats were, they were at last obliged to retreat, while the slavers returned with their prisoners to the schooner. as the slavers' boats were left on the other side of the island, which extended for more than a mile towards the sea, they were unable to follow their retreating enemy had they been so inclined; but in fact they did not relish the thought of coming in actual contact with british seamen, as they had good reason in believing the enemy to be, although weakened and dispirited by defeat. when the prisoners, who had not uttered a word, were handed up on deck, the captain ordered lights to be brought, for he had no longer any fear of being discovered. one evidently, by his uniform, was an officer; the other two were seamen. the captain paced the deck in the interval before lights were brought, grinding his teeth and clinching his fists with rage, as he muttered to himself,-"he shall die--he wears that hated uniform: it reminds me of what i once was. oh, this hell within me! blood must quench its fire." a seaman now brought aft a lantern; its glare fell as well on the features of the prisoner as on that of the slave captain. both started. "staunton!" ejaculated the latter. "daggerfeldt!" exclaimed the prisoner. "you know me, then?" said the captain of the slaver, bitterly; "it will avail you little, though. i had wished it had been another man; but no matter--you must take your chance." the slaver's crew were now thronging aft. "well, meos amigos," he continued, in a fierce tone, "what is to be done with these spies? you are the judges, and must decide the case." "enforca-los--hang them, hang them--at least the officer. the other two may possibly enter, and they may be of service: we want good seamen to work the vessel, and these english generally are so." "you hear what your fate is to be," said daggerfeldt, turning to captain staunton. "you had better prepare for it. you may have some at home to regret your loss. if you have any messages, i will take care to transmit them. it is the only favour i can do you." while he spoke, a bitter sneer curled his lip, and his voice assumed a taunting tone, which he could not repress. the gallant officer, proud in his consciousness of virtue, confronted the villain boldly. "i would receive no favour, even my life, from one whose very name is a disgrace to humanity. even if the message i were to send was conveyed correctly, it would be polluted by the bearer. it would be little satisfaction for my friends to know that i was murdered in an african creek by the hands of a rascally slaver." while staunton was uttering these words, which he did in very bitterness of spirit, for, knowing the character of the wretch with whom he had to deal, he had not the remotest hope of saving either his own life or that of his people, the rage of daggerfeldt was rising till it surpassed his control. "silence!" he thundered, "or i will brain you on the spot!" but staunton stood unmoved. "madman, would you thus repay me for the life i saved?" he asked, calmly. "a curse on you for having saved it," answered the pirate, fiercely, returning his sword, which he had half drawn from its scabbard. "my hand, however, shall not do the deed. here, antonio diogo, here are the spies who wish to interfere in our trade, and would send us all to prison, or to the gallows, if they could catch us." "the end of a rope and a dance on nothing for the officer, say i," answered the mulatto mate. "see what his followers will do; speak to them in their own lingo, captain, and ask them whether they choose to walk overboard or join us." while he was speaking, some of the crew brought aft the two british seamen, with their hands lashed behind them. others, headed by antonio, immediately seized captain staunton, and led him to the gangway, one of the men running aloft to reeve a rope through the studding-sail sheet-block on the main-yard. staunton well knew what the preparations meant, but he trembled not; his whole anxiety was for the boats' crews he had led in the expedition which had ended so unfortunately, and for the two poor fellows whose lives, he feared, were about also to be sacrificed by the miscreants. the british seamen watched what was going forward, and by the convulsive workings of their features, and the exertions they were making to free their arms, were evidently longing to strike a blow to rescue him. daggerfeldt was better able to confront them than he had been to face staunton. "you are seamen belonging to a man-of-war outside this river, and you came here to interfere with our affairs?" "you've hit it to an affigraphy, my bo'," answered one of the men, glad, at all events, to get the use of his tongue. "we belongs to her majesty's brig `sylph,' and we came into this here cursed hole to take you or any other slaver we could fall in with; and now you knows what i am, i'll just tell you what you are--a runaway scoundrel of a piccarooning villain, whom no honest man would consort with, or even speak to, for that matter, except to give him a bit of his mind; and if you're not drowned, or blown up sky high, you'll be hung, as you deserve, as sure as you're as big a rascal as ever breathed. now, put that in your pipe, my bo', and smoke it." while he was thus running on, to the evident satisfaction of his shipmate, who, indifferent to their danger, seemed mightily to enjoy the joke, daggerfeldt in vain endeavoured to stop him. "silence!" he shouted, "or you go overboard this moment!" "you must bawl louder than that, my bo', if you wants to frighten jack hopkins, let me tell you," answered the undaunted seaman. "what is it you want of us? come, out with it; some villainy, i'll warrant." the captain of the slaver ground his teeth with fury, but he dared not kill the man who was bearding him, for he could not explain to his crew the nature of the offence, a very venial one in their eyes, and he wanted some good seamen. "i overlook your insolence," he answered, restraining his passion. "my crew are your judges. you have been convicted of endeavouring to capture us, and they give you your choice of joining us, or of going overboard; the dark stream alongside swarms with alligators. that fate is too good for your captain: he is to be hung." "why, what a cursed idiot you must be to suppose we'd ship with such a pretty set of scoundrels as you and your men are," answered jack hopkins, with a laugh. "i speak for myself and for bob short, too. it's all right, bob, i suppose?" he said, turning to his companion. "there's no use shilly-shallying with these blackguards." "ay, ay; i'm ready for what you are," replied bob short, who had gained his name from the succinctness of his observations apparently, rather than from his stature, for he was six feet high, while the name by which jack hopkins was generally known on board was peter palaver, from his inveterate habits of loquacity. "well, then, look ye here, mr daggerfeldt, i knowed you many years ago for an ill-begotten spawn of you knows what, and i knows you now for the biggest scoundrel unhung, so you must just take the compliments i've got to give you. now for the matter of dying, i'd rather die with a brave, noble fellow like our skipper than live in company with a man who has murdered his messmate, has seduced the girl who sheltered him from justice, and would now hang the man who saved his life. your favours! i'll have none on 'em." the fierce pirate and slaver stood abashed before the wild outbreak of the bold sailor, but quickly recovering himself, livid and trembling with rage, he shouted out to his crew-"heave these fools of englishmen overboard; they know more of our secrets than they ought, and will not join us. send this talking fellow first." "if it comes to that, i can find my tongue too, let me tell you," exclaimed bob short; "you're a murderous, rascally, thieving--" "heave them both together," shouted daggerfeldt. "stay," said antonio, who was refined in his cruelty; "let them have the pleasure of seeing their captain hang first, since they are so fond of him. he well knows what their fate will be, and perhaps he would rather they went overboard than joined us." "do as you like, but let it be done quickly," answered daggerfeldt. "i'm sick of this work, and we must be preparing to get out of the river, or their friends will be sending in here to look for us." hopkins and short did not understand a word of this conversation, and finding themselves brought close up to where their captain stood engaged in his devotions, and preparing like a brave man for inevitable death, they believed that they were to share his fate. "well, i'm blowed if that ain't more than i expected of the beggars," whispered jack hopkins to his companion; "they're going to do the thing that's right after all, and launch us in our last cruise in the same way as the captain." "jack, can you pray?" asked bob short. "why, for the matter of that i was never much of a hand at it," answered jack; "but when i was a youngster i was taught to thank god for all his mercies, and i do so still. why do you ask?" "i was thinking as how as the skipper is taking a spell at it, whether we might ask him just to put in a word for us. he knows more about it, and a captain of a man-of-war must have a greater chance of being attended to than one of us, you see, jack." poor bob could never thus have exerted himself had he not felt that he should only have a few words more to speak in this life. jack looked at him in surprise. "i'll ask him, bob, i'll ask him; but you know as how the parson says, in the country we are going to all men are equal, and so i suppose we ought to pray for ourselves." "but we are still in this world, jack," argued the other; "captain staunton is still our captain, and we are before the mast." he spoke loud, and captain staunton had apparently overheard the conversation, for he smiled and looked towards them. he had been offering up a prayer to the throne on high for mercy for the failings of the two honest fellows, whose ignorance it was now too late to enlighten. antonio was a pious catholic, and, villain as he was, he was unwilling not to give the chance of a quiet passage into the other world to his victims. "what are you about there?" shouted daggerfeldt; "is this work never to end?" "the men are praying, senor, before they slip their cables for eternity," answered antonio. "is there an eternity?" muttered the pirate, and shuddered. on captain staunton's turning his head, on which the light from the lantern fell strongly, antonio believed it was the signal that he was prepared,--"hoist away!" he shouted, in spanish; but at that instant a light female form rushed forth from the cabin, and seizing the whip, held it forcibly down with one hand while she disengaged the noose from the captain's neck. "oh, juan! have you not murders enough on your head already that you must commit another in cold blood?" she exclaimed, turning to daggerfeldt, "and that other on one who saved your life at the risk of his own. i knew him--before all my misery began, and recognised him at once. if you persist, i leave you; you know me well, i fear not to die; antonio, you dare not disobey me. unreeve that rope, and leave me to settle with our captain regarding these men." the slaver's crew stood sulky and with frowning aspect around her, yet they in no way interrupted her proceedings, while daggerfeldt stood a silent spectator in the after-part of the vessel. "unreeve that rope! again i say," she exclaimed, stamping on the deck with her foot. the order was obeyed without the captain's interference. "your lives are safe for the present," she said, addressing the englishmen. "i know that man's humour, and he dares not now contradict me. i am the only thing who yet clings to him, the only one he thinks who loves him, the only being in whom he can place his trust; that explains my power." she spoke hurriedly and low, so that staunton alone could hear her, and there was scorn in her tone. "cast those men loose," she continued, turning to the crew, while with her own hands she undid the cords which lashed staunton's arms, and as she did so she whispered, "keep together, and edge towards the arms-chest. there are those on board who will aid me if any attempt is made to injure you." saying this she approached the captain of the slaver; she touched his arm: "juan," she said, in a softened tone, totally different from that in which she had hitherto spoken; "i am wayward, and have my fancies. i felt certain that your death would immediately follow that of those men. i was asleep in my cabin, and dreamed that you were struggling in the waves, and they, seizing hold of you, were about to drag you down with them." daggerfeldt looked down at her as she stood in a supplicating attitude before him. "you are fanciful, juanetta; but you love me, girl." "have i not proved it?" she answered in a tone of sadness; "you will save the lives of these men?" "i tell you i will. we will carry them in chains to cuba, and there sell them as slaves." "you must let them go free here," she answered. "impossible, juanetta; do you wish to betray me?" he asked, fiercely. "go to your cabin. the men shall not be hurt, and they will be better off than the blacks on board." she was silent, and then retired to her cabin, speaking on her way a word to a negro who stood near the entrance. "mauro," she said, "watch those men, and if you observe any signs of treachery, let me know." the black signified that he comprehended her wishes, and would obey them. the escape. captain staunton and his companions were not allowed to remain long at liberty; for as soon as the lady had retired, at a sign from daggerfeldt, the slaver's crew again attempted to lash their arms behind them, not, however, without some resistance on the part of hopkins and short. the most zealous in this work was the negro mauro, who contrived, as he was passing a rope round captain staunton's arm, to whisper in his ear, "make no resistance, senor, it is useless. you have friends near you. tell your followers to keep quiet. they can do themselves no good." staunton accordingly told his men to follow his example, when they quietly submitted to their fate. before this, he had contemplated the possibility of their being able to succeed in getting arms from the arms-chest, and either selling their lives dearly, or jumping overboard and attempting to reach the shore. in most slavers the lower deck is devoted entirely to the slaves and the provisions, the men sleeping under a topgallant-forecastle, or sometimes on the open deck, and the captain and mates under the poop deck. there was, therefore, no spare place in which to confine the prisoners, and they were accordingly told to take up their quarters under an awning stretched between two guns in the waist. this was better accommodation than they could have expected, for not only were they sheltered partially from the dew, but were screened from the observation of the crew, and were not subject to the suffocating heat of the between-decks. a night may, however, be more agreeably spent than on a hard plank, up an african river, with a prospect of being sent to feed the alligators in the morning, and the certainty of a long separation from one's friends and country, not to speak of the nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand of one's losing one's health, if not one's life, by the insatiable yellow-fever. the reflections of captain staunton were most bitter. he thought not of himself, but of her he had loved so long and faithfully; she would believe him dead, and he knew how poignant would be her grief. he felt sure that she would not be faithless to his memory, but months, even years, might pass before he might escape, or have the means of informing her of his existence. while these ideas were passing through his mind, it was impossible to sleep. there were, too, the midnight noises of the african clime: the croaking of frogs, the chirrup of birds, the howl of wild beasts, the cries, if not of fish, of innumerable amphibious animals of flesh and fowl, and, more than all, the groans and moans of the unhappy beings confined in their noisome sepulchre below; all combined to make a concert sounding as might the distant echoes of pandemonium. at length, however, towards the morning, nature gave way, and he forgot himself and his unfortunates in slumber. it had not lasted many minutes when he was aroused by a hand placed on his shoulder, while a soft hush was whispered in his ear. at the same time he felt that there was a knife employed in cutting the ropes which bound his arms. something told him that the person performing this office was a friend, so he did not attempt to speak, but quietly waited to learn what, he was next expected to do. again the voice whispered in his ear,-"arouse your companions, if possible, but beware that they do not speak aloud; caution them in their ear as i did you--their heads are near where yours lies." the voice which spoke, from its silvery tones, staunton felt certain was that of a female, as was the hand which loosened his bonds. without hesitation, therefore, he did as he was desired, and putting his mouth down to hopkins's ear, he ordered him on his life not to utter a word. jack was awake in a moment, and alive to the state of affairs. they had more difficulty in arousing bob short, who uttered several very treacherous groans and grunts before he was quite awake, though he fortunately did not speak. had captain staunton been aware that a sentry was actually posted outside the screen, he would have trembled for their safety. fortunately the man was fast asleep, reclining against the bulwarks--a fact ascertained by jack hopkins, who poked his head from under the screen to ascertain how the coast lay. not a sound was heard to give notice that any of the crew were stirring on deck. staunton, feeling that his best course was to trust implicitly to his unseen guide, waited till he received directions how to proceed. he soon felt himself pulled gently by the arm towards the nearest port, which was sufficiently raised to enable him to pass through it. on putting his head out, he perceived through the obscurity a canoe with a single person in it, hanging on alongside the schooner. his guide dropped noiselessly into it, and took her place in the stern; staunton cautiously followed, and seating himself in the afterthwart, found a paddle put into his hands; jack and bob required no one to tell them what to do, but quickly also took their places in the boat. as soon as they were seated, the man who was first in the canoe shoved her off gently from the side of the schooner; and while the guide directed their course, began to paddle off rapidly towards the centre of the stream. so dexterously did he apply his oar, that not a splash was heard, though the canoe darted quickly along through the ink-like current without leaving even a ripple in her wake. not a word was uttered by any of the party; every one seemed to be aware of the importance of silence, and even peter palaver forebore to cut a joke, which he felt very much inclined to do, as he found himself increasing his distance from the black slaver. the pursuit. the canoe held her silent course down the dark and mirror-like stream towards the sea. not a breath of wind moved the leaves of the lofty palm-trees which towered above their heads, casting their tall shadows on the calm waters below, while here and there a star was seen piercing as it were through the thick canopy of branches; the air was hot and oppressive, and a noxious exhalation rose from the muddy banks, whence the tide had run off. now and then a lazy alligator would run his long snout above the surface of the stream, like some water demon, and again glide noiselessly back into his slimy couch. "tell your people to take to their paddles and ply them well," said the guide, in a louder tone than had hitherto been used. staunton was now certain that it was juanetta's voice--that of the lady who had preserved his life. "we are still some distance from the sea, in reaching which is our only chance of safety; for if we are overtaken--and the moment our flight is discovered, we shall be pursued--our death is certain." the instant bob and jack had leave to use their paddles they plied them most vigorously, and the canoe, which had hitherto glided, now sprang, as it were, through the water, throwing up sparkling bubbles on either side of her sharp bows. "pull on, my brave men," she exclaimed to herself, more than to the seamen, "every thing depends on our speed. the tide is still making out, and if we can clear the mouth of the river before the flood sets in all will be well." she spoke in spanish, a language staunton understood well. her eye was meantime turning in every direction as her hand skilfully guided the boat. "there are scouts about who might attempt to stop us if they suspected we were fugitives. i have, however, the pass-word, and can without difficulty mislead them if we encounter any. your own people, too, may be in the river looking out for the schooner." "i think not," answered staunton. "we had lost one of our boats, and as i am believed dead, my successor (poor fellow, how he will be disappointed!) will, if he acts wisely, not attempt to capture the `espanto' except with the `sylph' herself." "the greater necessity, then, for our getting out to sea. it is already dawn. observe the red glare bursting through the mist in the eastern sky, just through the vista of palm-trees up that long reach. we shall soon have no longer the friendly darkness to conceal us." as she was speaking a large canoe was seen gliding calmly up the stream, close in with the bank. the people in her hailed in the negro language, and the man who was first in the canoe promptly answered in the same. "ask them if they have seen the english man-of-war," said juanetta. the negroes answered that she was still riding at anchor off the mouth of the river. "we shall thus be safe if we can reach the open sea," she observed; "but we have still some miles to row before we can get clear of the treacherous woods which surround us; and perhaps when our flight is discovered, our pursuers may take one of the other channels, and we may find our egress stopped at the very mouth of the stream. this suspense is dreadful." "we may yet strike a blow for you, and for our own liberty, senora," answered staunton. "it was fortunate the obscurity prevented the people in the canoe from discovering us." "that matters little. no one would venture to stop me but that man, that demon rather in human disguise, daggerfeldt, as you call him," she replied, bitterly, pronouncing the name as one to which she was unaccustomed. "ah, senor; love--ardent, blind, mad love--can be turned to the most deadly hatred. criminal, lost as i have been, i feel that there is a step further into iniquity, and that step i have refused to take. the scales have fallen from my eyes, and i have seen the enormity of my wickedness, and have discovered the foulness of my wrongs. from his own lips the dreadful information came. in the same breath he acknowledged that he had murdered my father and deceived me. as he slept he told the dreadful tale; the sight of you conjured up the past to his memory; other murders he talked of, and treachery of all sorts attempted. he mocked, too, at me, and at my credulity. i learned also that he still contemplated your destruction as well as mine. i who had preserved his life, who had sacrificed my happiness here and hereafter for his sake, was to be cast off for another lady fairer and younger, so it seemed to me, but i could not understand all his words, for sometimes he spoke in his native language, sometimes in spanish. enough was heard to decide me. i had long contemplated quitting him. i knew that it was wrong remaining, but had not strength before to tear asunder my bonds, till the feeling that i might rescue you, and make some slight reparation to heaven for my wickedness, gave me strength to undertake the enterprise. there, senor, you know the reason of your liberation; my trusty mauro, who has ever been faithful, provided the means." she spoke in a hurried tone, and her sentences were broken, as if she hesitated to speak of her disgrace and misery, but yet was urged on by an irresistible impulse. even while she was speaking her eye was on the alert, and her hand continued skilfully to guide the canoe. the stars had gradually disappeared, sinking as it were into a bed of thick leaden-coloured mist, which overspread the narrow arch overhead, while in the east a red glow appeared which melted away as the pale daylight slowly filled the air. it was day, but there was no joyousness in animated nature, or elasticity in the atmosphere, as at that time in other regions. a sombre hue tinted the trees, the water, and the sky; even the chattering of innumerable parrots, and the cries of those caricatures of men, many thousands of obscene monkeys, appeared rather to mock at than to welcome the return of the world to life. the canoe flew rapidly on. suddenly juanetta lifted her paddle from the water; her ears were keenly employed. "hark!" she said, "cease rowing; there is the sound of oars in the water. ah! it is as i thought. there is a boat endeavouring to cut us off by taking another channel; she is still astern of us though, but we must not slack our exertions." captain staunton redoubled his efforts, as did his men on his telling them they were pursued. after the story he had heard, he was now doubly anxious to rescue the unfortunate girl from the power of the miscreant daggerfeldt. they now entered a broader reach of the river below the fork, where the channel which juanetta supposed their pursuers had taken united with the one they were following. they had got some way down it when staunton observed a large boat emerging from behind the woody screen. juanetta judged from his eye that he had caught sight of the boat. "is it as i thought?" she asked, calmly. staunton told her that he could distinguish a boat, evidently pursuing them, but whether she belonged to his ship or to the slaver, he could not judge. "we must not stay to examine; if we were mistaken we should be lost," she observed; "but we have the means of defending ourselves--see, i had fire-arms placed in the bottom of the canoe, and here are powder-horns under the seat. mauro has carefully loaded them, and if they attempt to stop us we must use them." on they pulled, straining every nerve to the utmost, but the canoe was heavily laden, and the boat gained on them. staunton trusted that their pursuers might be his own people, but his hope vanished when one of them rose; there was a wreath of smoke, a sharp report, and a bullet flew over their heads and splintered the branch of a tree which grew at the end of a point they were just then doubling. "aim lower next time, my bo', if you wish to wing us," shouted jack hopkins, who saw no use in longer keeping silence. "ah!" exclaimed juanetta, "the blue sea--we may yet escape." as she spoke, another shot better aimed took effect on the quarter of the canoe, but did no further injury. it showed, however, that there were good marksmen in the boat intent on mischief, and that they were perilously near already. for some time they were again shut out from their pursuers, but as the latter doubled the last point, they had, too evidently, gained on them. "if any one again rises to fire, you must take also to your arms, senor," said juanetta, a shudder passing through her frame; "and if it is he, kill him--kill him without remorse. he has shown none. that rifle at your feet was his--it was always true to its aim." she had scarcely ceased speaking, when a figure stood up in the boat. it seemed to have the likeness of daggerfeldt. staunton seized the rifle to fire--he was too late. ere he had drawn the trigger, a flash was seen, and juanetta, with a wild shriek, fell forward into the canoe. staunton fired; the man who had sent the fatal shot stood unharmed, but the oar of one fell from his grasp, and got entangled with those of the others. this would have enabled the canoe to recover her lost ground, had not mauro, on seeing his beloved mistress fall, thrown up his paddle, exclaiming that he wished to die with her. "she may yet be saved if you exert yourself," cried staunton, in spanish; "row--for your life row; i will attend to your mistress." urged by the officer's commanding tone, the negro again resumed his paddle. staunton, still guiding the canoe, raised juanetta, and placed her back in the stern-sheets--she scarcely breathed. the ball had apparently entered her neck, though no blood was to be seen. he suspected the worst, but dared not utter his fears lest mauro should again give way to his grief. several other shots were fired at them from the boat, which was rapidly gaining on them. they were close on the bar, in another moment they would be in clear water. the slaver crew shouted fiercely; again a volley was fired, the balls from which went through and through the sides of the slight canoe, without wounding any one, but making holes for the water to rush in. one more volley would sink them, when a loud cheerful shout rung in their ears, and two boats with the british ensign trailing from the stern were seen pulling rapidly towards them. jack hopkins and bob short answered the hail; the pirates, too, saw the boats, they ceased rowing, and then pulling round, retraced their course up the river. the canoe, with the rapid current, flew over the bar, and had barely time to get alongside the barge of the "sylph," when she was full up to the thwarts. we need not say that his crew welcomed captain staunton's return in safety with shouts of joy, after they had believed him dead. with the strong current then setting out of the river it was found hopeless to follow the slaver's boat. they were soon alongside the brig. poor juanetta was carried carefully to the captain's cabin, watched earnestly by mauro. the surgeon examined her wound. "her hours are numbered," he said. "no art of mine can save her." the action. calm and treacherously beautiful as was the morning on which captain staunton regained his ship, scarcely had she got under way to stand in closer to the mouth of the river, in order to watch more narrowly for the schooner, should she attempt to run out, than a dark cloud was seen rising over the land. it appeared on a sudden, and extended rapidly, till it spread over the whole eastern sky. "i fear that it will not do with the weather we have in prospect to send the boats up the river again to retrieve our defeat, mr collins," said captain staunton, pointing to the threatening sky. "i think not, sir, with you," answered the lieutenant; "in fact, if i may advise, the sooner we shorten sail the better, or we may have it down upon us before we are prepared." "you are right, mr collins; shorten sail as soon as you please," said the captain. "all hands shorten sail," was sung along the decks. "aloft there"--"lay out"--"be smart about it"--"in with every thing"--"let fly"--"haul down"--"brail up"--"be smart, it will be down upon us thick and strong, in a moment"--"up with the helm"--"look out there aloft"--"be smart, my lads." such were the different orders issued, and exclamations uttered in succession by the officers. a moment before, the sea was smooth as glass, and the brig had scarcely steerage-way. now the loud roaring of the angry blast was heard, and the flapping of the yet unfolded canvas against the masts; the ocean was a sheet of white foam, and the sky a canopy of inky hue. away the brig flew before it, leaving the land astern, her sails were closely furled, and she remained unharmed, not a spar was sprung, not a rope carried away, not a sail injured. thus she flew on under bare poles till the squall subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and sail was again made to recover the ground they had lost. land was still visible, blue and indistinct, but many fears were naturally entertained lest the slaver, which had already given them so much trouble, should have got out of the river with her living cargo, and by keeping either way along shore, have escaped them. for some minutes the wind entirely failed, and curses loud and deep were uttered at their ill luck, when, as if to rebuke them for their discontent, the fine fresh sea-breeze set in, and, with a flowing sheet, carried them gayly along. every eye was employed in looking out for the slaver, for they could not suppose she would have lost the opportunity of getting out during their absence. they were not kept long in suspense. "a sail on the starboard bow," cried the look-out from the masthead. "what is she like?" asked the first lieutenant. "a schooner, sir. the slaver, sir, as we chased afore," answered the seaman, his anxiety that she should be so making him fancy he could not be mistaken. "the fellow must have sharp eyes indeed to know her at this distance," muttered the lieutenant to himself with a smile; "however, i suppose he's right. we must not, though, be chasing the wrong craft while the enemy is escaping. which way is she standing?" he asked. "to the southward, sir, with every stitch of canvas she can carry," was the answer. the officer made the proper official report to the captain. "we must be after her at all events," said captain staunton. "haul up, mr collins, in chase. send mr stevenson away in the barge to watch the mouth of the river." the brig was forthwith brought to the wind, the barge in a very short space of time was launched and manned with a stout crew well-armed and provisioned, and she shoved off to perform her duty, while the "sylph" followed the strange sail. the man-of-war had evidently an advantage over the stranger, for while the sea-breeze in the offing blew fresh and steady, in-shore it was light and variable. on perceiving this, captain staunton kept his brig still nearer to the wind, and ran down, close-hauled, along the coast, thus keeping the strength of the wind, and coming up hand over hand with the stranger, who lay at times almost becalmed under the land. the breeze, however, before they came abreast of her reached her also, and away she flew like a startled hare just aroused from sleep. "fire a gun to bring her to," exclaimed the captain; "she shall have no reason to mistake our intentions." the british ensign was run up, and a gun was discharged, but to no effect. two others followed, which only caused her to make more sail; and by her luffing closer up to the wind, she apparently hoped to weather on them, and cross their bows. she was a large schooner, and by the way sail was made on her, probably strongly-handed, so that there could be little doubt that she was the vessel for which they were in search. "send a shot into the fellow," exclaimed the captain; "that will prove we are in earnest, and make him show his colours." the shot clearly hit the schooner, although the range was somewhat long, but it did slight damage. it had the effect though of making him show his ensign, and the stripes and stars of the united states streamed out to the breeze. "those are not the fellow's colours, i'll swear," said mr collins, as he looked through his glass. "another shot will teach him we are not to be humbugged." "give it him, collins, and see if you can knock away any of his spars," said the captain. "we must follow that fellow round the world till we bring him to action, and take or sink him. he'll not heave-to for us, depend upon that." "not if daggerfeldt is the captain," answered the first lieutenant. "i think she is his schooner; but he is so continually altering her appearance that it is difficult to be quite certain." "though i was some hours on board of her, as i reached her in the dark, and left her before it was light, i cannot be certain," observed captain staunton, as he took a turn on the quarter-deck with his officer. "by the by, there is that poor girl's black attendant; he will know the vessel at all events. tell him to come up and give us his opinion." the lieutenant went into the captain's cabin, and soon after returned, observing,-"he will not quit his mistress, sir; and the surgeon tells me he has sat by her side without stirring, watching every movement of her lips as a mother does her only child. as no one on board can speak his language but you, sir, we cannot make him understand why he is wanted on deck." "oh, i forgot that: i will speak to him myself," answered the captain. "keep firing at the chase till she heaves-to, and then see that she does not play us any trick. daggerfeldt is up to every thing." captain staunton descended to his cabin. juanetta lay on the sofa, a sheet thrown over her limbs, her countenance of a corpse-like hue, but by the slight movements of her lips she still breathed. the black hung over her, applying a handkerchief to her brow to wipe away the cold damps gathering there. her features, though slightly sunk, as seen in the subdued light of the cabin, seemed like those of some beautiful statue rather than of a living being. the surgeon stood at the head of the couch, endeavouring to stop the haemorrhage from the wound. "i dare not probe for the ball," he whispered, as if the dying girl could understand him; "it would only add to her torture, and i cannot prolong her life." "and this is thy handiwork, daggerfeldt--another victim of thy unholy passions," muttered the captain, as he gazed at her for a moment. "poor girl, we will avenge thee!" he had considerable difficulty in persuading mauro to quit his mistress; but at length the faithful black allowed himself to be led on deck. he looked round, at first bewildered, as if unconscious where he was; but when his eye fell on the schooner, it brightened up, as if meeting an object with which it was familiar, and a fierce expression took possession of his countenance. "es ella, es ella, senor!" he exclaimed, vehemently. "it is she, it is she--fire, fire--kill him, kill him, he has slain my mistress!" a gun was just then discharged, the shot struck the quarter of the schooner, and the white splinters were seen flying from it. on seeing this he shouted with savage joy, clapped his hands, and spat in the direction of the slaver, exhibiting every other sign he could think of, of hatred and rage. having thus given way to his feelings, the recollection of his mistress returned, and with a groan of anguish he rushed down below. the two vessels had been gradually drawing closer to each other, in consequence of the schooner luffing up to endeavour to cross the bows of the brig, and if she could, to get to windward of her, the only chance she had of escaping. the eyes of the officers were fixed on her to watch her movements. "she's about--all right!" shouted the captain. "give her a broadside while she is in stays, and knock away some of her spars. fire high, my lads, so as not to hurt her hull." the brig discharged her whole larboard battery, and the fore-topmast of the schooner was seen tumbling below. "by jingo, we've dished him!" exclaimed jack hopkins, to his chum, bob short; "and i'm blowed, bob, if it wasn't my shot did that ere for him. i never lost sight of it till it struck." "maybe," answered bob; "hard to prove, though." the schooner had sufficient way on her to bring her round before the topmast fell, and she was now brought into a position partially to rake the brig, though at the distance the two vessels were from each other, the aim was very uncertain. that daggerfeldt had determined to fight his vessel was now evident, for the flag of the united states being hauled down, that of spain was run up in its stead, and at the same moment a broadside was let fly from the schooner. the shot came whizzing over and about the brig, but one only struck her, carrying away the side of a port, a splinter from which slightly wounded bob short in the leg. "ough!" exclaimed bob, quietly binding his handkerchief round the limb without quitting his post, "they're uncivil blackguards." "never mind, bob," said jack hopkins, "we'll soon have an opportunity of giving them something in return. see, by jingo, we've shot away his forestay! we'll have his foremast down in a jiffy. huzza, my boys, let's try what we can do!" whether jack's gun was well aimed it is difficult to say, but at all events the shot from the brig told with considerable effect on the rigging of the schooner. the brig did not altogether escape from the fire of the enemy, who worked his guns rapidly; but whenever a brace was shot away it was quickly again rove, so that she was always kept well under command. the loss of her fore-topmast made the escape of the schooner hopeless, unless she could equally cripple her pursuer; but that she had not contrived to do, and accordingly, as the two vessels drew closer together, the fire from each took more effect. daggerfeldt, to do him justice, did all a seaman could do, and in a very short space of time the wreck of his topmast was cleared away, and he was preparing to get up a new one in its place. the sea was perfectly smooth, and the wind gradually fell till there was scarcely enough to blow away the smoke from the guns of the combatants, which in thick curling wreaths surrounded them, till at intervals only could the adjacent land and the ocean be seen. although daggerfeldt could scarcely have hoped to succeed either in escaping or coming off the victor, he still refused to haul down his colours, even when the "sylph," shooting past ahead of him, poured in her whole broadside, sweeping his decks, and killing and wounding several of his people. dreadful were the shrieks which arose from the poor affrighted wretches confined below, although none of them were injured. the "sylph" then wore round, and, passing under her stern, gave her another broadside, and then luffing up, ran her alongside--the grappling-irons were hove on board, and she was secured in a deadly embrace. the miserable blacks, believing that every moment was to be their last, again uttered loud cries of horror; but the slaver's crew, some of whom fought with halters round their necks, still refused to yield, and, with cutlass in hand, seemed prepared to defend their vessel to the last, as the british seamen, led on by their captain, leaped upon the decks. staunton endeavoured to single out daggerfeldt, but he could nowhere distinguish him; and after a severe struggle, in which several of the spaniards were killed, he fought his way aft, and hauled down the colours. at that instant a female form, with a white robe thrown around her, was seen standing on the deck of the brig; the crew of the slaver also saw her, and, believing her to be a spirit of another world, fancied she had come to warn them of their fate. the energies of many were paralysed, and some threw down their arms and begged for quarter. a loud, piercing shriek was heard. "i am avenged, i am avenged!" she cried, and sank upon the deck. it was juanetta. mauro, who had followed her from the cabin, threw himself by her side, and wrung his hands in despair. they raised up her head, and the surgeon felt her pulse. she had ceased to breathe. no further resistance was offered by the crew of the slaver. eight hundred human beings--men, women, and children--were found stowed below, wedged so closely together, that none could move without disturbing his neighbour. some had actually died from sheer fright at the noise of the cannonading. instant search was made for daggerfeldt; he was nowhere to be found, and the crew either could not or would not give any information respecting him. the prize was carried safely to sierra leone, where she was condemned; the slaves were liberated, and became colonists; and captain staunton, and his officers and crew, got a handsome share of prize-money. the "sylph" was in the following month recalled home, and a few weeks afterward the papers announced the marriage of captain staunton, rn, to miss blanche d'aubigne. chapter fifteen. corunna--oporto--pull up the douro--notice of the siege of oporto-line-of-battle ship. porpoise's story lasted out the gale. we were not sorry to see the conclusion of the latter, though it left old ocean in a very uncomfortable state for some time. a downright heavy gale is undoubtedly a very fine thing to witness--at least the effects are--and every man would wish to see one once in his life; but having experienced what it can do, and how it makes the ocean look and human beings feel, a wise man will be satisfied, at all events if he is to fall in with it in a small cutter in the bay of biscay when that once is over. i've had to go through a good many in the course of my nautical career; and though i've often heard sung with much gusto- "one night it blew a hurricane, the sea was mountains rolling, when barney buntline turned his quid, and cried to billy bowline: "`here's a south-wester coming, billy; don't you hear it roar now? lord help 'em, how i pities those unhappy folks ashore now! "`while you and i upon the deck are comfortably lying, my eyes! what tiles and chimney-tops about their heads are flying!'" i mustn't quote more of the old song; for my own part i like a steady breeze and a smooth sea, when plates and dishes will stay quietly on the table, and a person may walk the deck without any undue exertion of the muscles of the leg. the gale had driven us somewhat into the bay, and finding it would cause us little delay to look into corunna, we determined to go there. the entrance to the harbour is very easy--a fine tall lighthouse on the south clearly making it. we brought up off the town, which is situated along the circular shore of a bay something like weymouth. after paying our respects to the consul, we mounted a troop of steeds offered us for hire, and galloped off to inspect the chief scenes of the engagement between the english and the french, when the former retreated under sir john moore. on our return we visited his tomb, situated on the ramparts on the sea side of the town; the tomb is surrounded with cannon, with their muzzles downward--a fit monument to the hero who sleeps beneath. carstairs did not fail to repeat with due effect- "not a sound was heard; not a funeral note." they are truly magnificent lines, rarely equalled. some, however, of a like character appeared lately on havelock, which are very much to my taste. but where am i driving to with my poetry and criticism? we got on board the same night, and made sail by daybreak the next morning. we looked into the deep and picturesque gulf of vigo, and thought the town a very nasty one, in spite of its imposing castle on the top of a hill. had we come from the south we might have formed a different opinion of the place. we hove-to off oporto, and should have gone in, but though exempt from harbour-dues, we found that the pilotage would be heavy, and that we might have some difficulty in getting out again over the bar which has formed across the mouth of the douro. the city stands on a granite hill on the north side of the river, and about three miles from the sea. fortunately for us, while we were hove-to there, the steamer from england came in sight, and we were able to obtain a passage on shore in the boats which brought off the mail bags. hearty, bubble, and i formed the party; carstairs and porpoise remained to take care of the ship. away we pulled with the glee of schoolboys on a holiday excursion; the boat was large, but of the roughest description--with the stem and stern alike--probably not changed since the earliest days of the portuguese monarchy; she was double-banked, pulling twelve oars at least. the men mostly wore red caps, with a coloured sash round their waists, and had shoeless feet; some had huge wooden slippers, almost big enough to go to sea in. many of them were fine-looking fellows, but they were very unlike english sailors, and oh! how they did jabber. to those who understood them their observations might have been very sensible, but to our ears their voices sounded like the chattering of a huge family of monkeys in their native woods. the view before us consisted of the blue shining sea, a large whitewashed and yellow-washed village to the north, called st. joao da foz, with a lighthouse on a hill at one end of it, a line of black rocks and white breakers before us, and to the south a yellow beach with cliffs and pine-trees beyond, and a convent, and a few of the higher standing houses and churches of oporto in the distance. when we got near the white foam-topped rollers, all the jabbering ceased, our crew bent to their oars like men worthy of descendants of albuquerque's gallant crew; and the boat now backed for an instant, now dashing on, we were in smooth water close under the walls of a no very formidable-looking fortress. a little farther on we landed at a stone slip, at the before-mentioned village, among fishwomen, and porters, and boatmen, and soldiers, and custom-house guards, and boys, all talking away most vociferously. as we had no luggage to carry, we were allowed to look about us. what we should have done i scarcely know, had not bubble, who never failed to find acquaintance in every place, recognised an english gentleman who had come down to the river to embark for the city. bubble's friend was invaluable to us; he first invited us to go up the river in his boat, and pointed out numerous spots of interest on the way. the boat was a curious affair; it had a flat bottom and sides, and narrowed to a rising point forward. the greater part was covered with a wooden awning painted green, and supported by wooden stanchions; and the seats run fore and aft round the sides; it had yellow curtains to keep out the sun or rain; the crew, three in number, stood up with their faces to the bow, pressing against the oars; two stood on a deck forward, and one, who occasionally brought his oar in a line with the keel, rowed aft. dressed in red caps with red sashes, and mostly in white or blue-striped garments, they had a picturesque appearance. although the civil war which overthrew despotism, and planted the present line on the throne, had occurred so long before, our new friend spoke of it with as much interest as if it had but lately been concluded. such an occurrence, indeed, was the great event in the lives of a generation. on the south side of the entrance of the river is a long sandbank; on the north side is the castle of foz, or the mouth. this castle was built by the pedroites, and it was literally the key on which depended the success of the enterprise. had it been taken, the communication with the sea and oporto would have been cut off, and the liberals would have been starved out. for the greater portion of the time occupied by the struggle, dom pedro's followers held little more than the city of oporto and a line of country on the north bank of the douro scarcely a mile wide, leading from the city to the sea. they held the lighthouse at the north point of the village; but a few hundred yards beyond was a mound on which the miguelites erected a strong battery. not a spot along the whole line but what was the scene of some desperate encounter; and most certainly the portuguese constitutionalists of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, fought as bravely as men could fight in the noblest of causes. heaven favoured the right, and in spite of apparently overwhelming hosts opposed to them, of disease and gaunt famine, they won their cause, and the mother of the present enlightened king of portugal ascended the throne. but i am writing the cruise of the "frolic," and not a history of portugal. still i must dot down a few of our friend's anecdotes. while the north side of the river was held by the constitutionalists, the south was in the hands of the miguelites, and the two parties used to amuse themselves by firing at each other across the stream, so that it was dangerous to pass along the lower road by daylight. on one occasion, the miguelites, wishing to attack the castle, brought a number of casks to the end of the spit of sand at the entrance of the river, and erected a battery on it, but they forgot to fill the casks with sand or earth; when morning broke there was a formidable battery directly under the walls of the castle. some unfortunate troops were placed in it to work the guns; all went very well till the guns of the castle began to play on it, and then a few shots sent the entire fabric to the four winds of heaven, and either killed the soldiers placed in it, or drove them flying hurry-skurry across the sand, where many more were picked off by the rifles of the constitutionalists. what could be more unpleasant than having on a hot day to run along a heavy shingly beach, with a number of sharpshooters taking deliberate aim at one's corpus? happy would he be who could find a deep hole into which to roll himself out of harm's way. the banks of the douro are picturesque from the very entrance. on either side are broken cliffs; on the south covered with pine-groves, on the north with yellow, white, and pick houses and churches, and orange-groves. on the south we passed the remains of the old convent of st. antonio, where once the jovial monks feasted and sang and prayed, well supplied with the spoils of the sea. here pious fishermen used to stop and ask a blessing on their labours, on their way down the river, and on their return they failed not to offer the choice of their spoil to the worthy friars. the gardens of the convent were profusely ornamented with statues of curious device, and flowers, and vases, and orange-trees, and grottoes, and temples; all now swept away by the scythe of war--the convent walls now forming part of a manufactory. the monks have disappeared from portugal, and few people regret them less than the portuguese. at best they were drones; and, if we are to credit one-quarter of the tales told of them, they continued to do no little amount of evil in their generation. on the same side of the river, but much higher up, where the douro forces its way between two lofty cliffs, on the summit of the southern one, stands the once very celebrated convent of the sierra. from beneath its walls the duke of wellington led his army across the river into oporto, and drove marshal soult out of the city. this convent, and its surrounding garden, was the only spot held by the pedroites, and most heroically held it was, against the whole army of the usurper miguel, led by his best generals. day after day, and night after night, were his legions led to the attack, and as often were they repulsed by the half-starved defenders of its earth-formed ramparts. we may speak with pride of the siege of kars and of lucknow, and of many another event in the late war; but i hold that they do not eclipse the gallant defence of the portuguese constitutionalists of the sierra convent. below the convent the two banks of the river are now joined by a handsome iron suspension-bridge, which superseded one long existing formed of boats. the city stands below this point, rising on the converse steep sides of a granite hill, and with its numerous church-steeples, its tinted-walled houses, its bright red roofs interspersed with the polished green of orange-trees in its gardens, is a very picturesque city. along its quays are arranged vessels of various sizes, chiefly portuguese or brazilians, those of other nations anchoring on the other side, in the stream, to be away from the temptations of the wine-shops. on the south side is a bay with gently sloping shores; and here are found the long, low, narrow lodges in which are stowed the casks of port wine, which has perhaps made portugal and the portuguese more generally known to englishmen of all classes than would have been done by the historical associations connected with that beautiful country. as bubble's friend was on his way to visit his wine-pipes, he took us first to villa nova, the place i have been speaking of. one lodge he showed us contained three thousand pipes, ranged in long lines, two and three pipes one above another, which, at fifty pounds a pipe, represents a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. some of the english houses are said to have two or three times that quantity; but of course the young wine is not of the value i have mentioned. the port wine is grown on the banks of the douro, in a district commencing about fifty miles above the city. it is made in the autumn, and remains in large vats on the farms till the spring, when it is put into casks, and brought down in flat-bottomed boats to the lodges at villa nova. here it is racked and lotted to get rid of impurities, and has brandy put to it to keep it. our friend assured us that port wine will not keep for any length of time without brandy; the experiment has been tried over and over again. the only way to make it keep for a short time is to rack it constantly; but then it becomes spiritless, vapid, and colourless. to one conclusion we came, that port wine in the lodge at villa nova and port wine out of decanter at an english dinner-table are very different things; for port wine racked and lotted for the english market, and kept some years in a temperate cellar, is undoubtedly vastly superior to the juice of the grape before it is so prepared. having satisfied our curiosity, with our friend as guide, we crossed the river to oporto. we landed at a gateway in the brown old wall of the city, which runs along the river and up the hill to the east and west, surmounted by high, pointed battlements of a very moorish appearance, though the moors did not plant their conquering standard so far north as oporto. passing along a very narrow, cool, dirty, and somewhat odoriferous street, we entered a wide, well-paved one, called the rua nova. in the middle of it congregate the merchants every afternoon, at the exchange hour, to transact their public business. at the end of the street is a fine stone building, called the factory house, a sort of club belonging to the english, who become members by election. high above the end of the street, on a hill covered with houses, rises the old cathedral of oporto. we found our way to it along some narrow, twisting streets, with oriental-looking shops on either side--tinmen and goldsmiths and shoemakers and stationers--a line of each sort together. the cathedral, as well as all the churches we saw at oporto, were rather curious than elegant. for the greater part of our walk we were continually ascending along tolerably well-paved and clean streets, with stone houses and wide, projecting balconies, some with stone, others with iron balustrades. we passed through a street called the street of flowers; the chief shops in it were those of jewellers, who showed us some very beautiful filigree work in gold--brooches and ear-rings and rings. we next found ourselves in a square at the bottom of two hills, with wide streets running up each of them, and a church at their higher ends. one has a curious arabesque tower, of great height, which we saw a long way out at sea, called the torre dos clerigos. going up still higher we reached a large parade ground, with barracks at one end, and near them a granite-fronted church, called the lappa, where, in an urn, is preserved the heart of the heroic dom pedro--the grandfather of the present king of portugal. oporto is full of gardens, which make the city spread over a wide extent of ground. we were agreeably surprised with its bright, clean, cheerful look. built on a succession of granite hills, which afford admirable materials for the construction of its edifices, it has a substantial comfortable look. it is also tolerably well drained, and wayfarers are not much offended with either bad sights or smells. the variety of the costume of the inhabitants gives it a lively look; for although gentlemen and ladies have taken to french fashions, the townspeople still generally wear the graceful black mantilla, or coloured or white handkerchief over their heads, while the peasantry appear with broad-brimmed hats and cloth jackets, gay-coloured petticoats, and a profusion of gold ear-rings and chains. there are beggars, but they are not very importunate, and the smallest copper coin seemed to satisfy them. our friend told us that he has seen a portuguese gentleman, wanting a copper, take his snuff-box and present it to a beggar, who would take a pinch with the air of a noble, and shower a thousand blessings on the head of the donor in return. "the truth is, that the portuguese as a nation are the kindest people i have ever met," observed our friend. "they think charitably and act charitably, and do not despise each other; they are kindly affectionate one to another. a good government and a reformed church would make them a very happy people." our walk through the city was a hurried one, as we wished to be on board again before dark. we passed near a large palace, with some ugly visages garnishing the front. here dom pedro lived, and here marshal soult's dinner had been prepared, when the duke of wellington entered the city and ate it up. we found a boat ready to carry us down the river, which we reached by a steep, winding road. our friend kindly insisted on accompanying us. at foz a catria was prepared by our friend's directions to put us on board the yacht. oh, how refreshing to our olfactory senses, after the hot air of the streets, was the fresh sea-breeze as we reached the mouth of the river, and once more floated on the blue atlantic! the sun descended beneath the far western wave in a blaze of glory, such as i have seldom seen equalled in any latitude; the glow lit up the lappa church, the clerigos tower, and the sierra convent in the distance, suffusing a rich glow over the whole landscape. all sail was set, but we made little way through the water; a calm succeeded, and then the hot night-wind came off the land in fitful gusts, smelling of parched earth and dry leaves. having stood off the land sufficiently to clear every danger, we kept our course. the night was somewhat dark, and we had all turned in, leaving the mate in charge of the watch. i know not what it was made me restless and inclined to turn out, and breathe the fresher air on deck; probably i was heated with the long and exciting excursion of the day. as i put my head up the companion-hatch, sailor-fashion, i turned my eyes towards every point of the compass. did they deceive me? "hallo, sleet, what's that?" i exclaimed. "port the helm; hard aport, or we shall be run into." what was the look-out about? where were sleet's eyes? all, i suspect, were asleep. there, directly ahead of us, like some huge phantom of a disordered dream, came gliding on a line-of-battle ship, her tall masts and wide-spreading canvas towering up into the sky--a dark pyramid high above our heads; our destruction seemed inevitable. with a hail which horror made sound more like a shriek of despair, i summoned all hands on deck. happily, the man at the helm of the yacht obeyed my orders at the moment, and the agile little craft slipped out of the way as the huge monster glided by, her side almost touching our taffrail, and her lower studding-sail booms just passing over our peak--so it seemed; our topmast, i know, had a narrow squeak for it. "what ship's that?" shouted porpoise, springing on deck. "her britannic majesty's ship `megatherium,'" so the name sounded. "then let a better lookout be kept aboard her britannic majesty's ship `megatherium' in future, or the duke of blow-you-up will have to report to the lords commissioners of the admiralty," replied porpoise, through the speaking-trumpet. "i hauled in the duke just to frighten them a bit," he added; "they wouldn't care for the plain mister. the chances are that some of the lookouts had their eyes shut, and the officer of the watch had gone to freshen his nip a bit. no one dreams of danger on a fine night like this, and if a few small fishing-boats had been run down, no one would have heard any thing about it; there would be just a cry and a shriek from the drowning people, and all would be over. there's more danger of being run down on a calm night like this than in a gale of wind, when everybody has his eyes open." "what cutter is that?" hailed some on board the ship, through a speaking-trumpet, before porpoise had done speaking. "bow-wow-wow! i leave you to guess," he answered. by this time the vessels were so far apart that a hail could scarcely be distinguished, and so we separated. i only hope those who deserved a reprimand got it, and that any of my brother-officers, or other sea-going men who read these pages, will take the hint, and have as bright a lookout kept in fine weather as in foul. chapter sixteen. cintra--the tagus--lisbon--cadiz--gibraltar--sandgate again--old friends--news of my heroine. two days after our narrow escape, as the rising sun shed his bright rays over the world of waters, we again made the land a little to the northward of the rock of lisbon. we could see with our glasses the vast convent and palace of mafra, built by that debauched devotee, don john v. he had a notion, not uncommon at the present day, that, by rearing edifices of brick and mortar, he might thus create for himself a few stepping-stones towards heaven. the building shows a front of seven hundred feet at least towards the sea, with a lofty portico in the centre, and is capable of quartering all the troops in the kingdom. when monks dwelt there they must have had ample space for exercise. soon afterwards we came under the rocky heights of cintra. they surround a perfect oasis, rising from the arid plains about lisbon. every one knows cintra on account of its convention, not over creditable to its executors; its convent cut out of the rock, and lined with cork to keep the old monks warm; and its palace, built by the talented and eccentric beckford, now a mass of ruins. we just got a glimpse through a break in the rocks of its cork, orange, and citron groves, surrounded with sweet-scented shrubs. passing the bay of cascaes, a fresh breeze carried us by the white circular bugio fort, standing on a rock at the mouth of the tagus, and with a fair tide we ascended the river. in our company were a number of craft of all sorts, carrying flags of all nations. iron-moulded and weather-stained indiamen, and brazilian ships surrounded by boats full of people, who had come out to welcome relations and friends after a long absence; men-of-war, with their polished sides and snowy, wide-spreading canvas; heavily laden and heavy-looking english merchant-brigs, more esteemed for capacity than for speed, like london aldermen; tub-shaped, yellow-sided dutchmen, laden with cargoes more formidable in appearance than in reality. instead of being bomb-shells or round-shot, proving, on nearer inspection, to be dutch cheeses, to be dreaded only by those of weak digestion. contrasted with the heavy-looking foreign vessels were the portuguese rascas, employed chiefly in the coasting trade, with their graceful, high-pointed, lateen sails, sharp bows, and rounded decks, and the native schooners or hiates, with hulls not destitute of beauty, but rigged with masts raking at different angles, and gaffs peaked at unequal heights. there were also numberless sloops, and schooners, and boats of various sorts, the most curious being the lisbon fishing-boat, shaped like a bean-pod, curving up at stem and stern, with a short rounded deck at either end, and a single high lateen sail. a pilot whom we received on board off the bugio fort took us close to the white tower of belem, and its gothic church at the western end of lisbon, and brought us to an anchor among a crowd of other vessels off blackhorse square. lisbon rising on several hills from the waters of the wide-flowing tagus--here many miles across--is noted as a very picturesque city; its white buildings glittering in the sun, crowned by the dark frowning castle, and surrounded by suburbs intermixed with gardens filled with richly-tinted orange-trees and flowers of many hues. gold and silver streets are handsome streets; and there are some fine palaces, and the opera house is a respectable edifice, and has, moreover, a very good opera; but, though improved of late years, we were told, in cleanliness, it is still a very dirty city, and the lower orders have a marked inferiority to those we saw at oporto. they are a darker, smaller race, with much moorish blood in their veins, without any mixture of the nobler gothic stream from which the inhabitants of the north have sprung. they are the fellows who have gained for the portuguese the character of being assassins and robbers, which certainly those in the north do not deserve. however, a strong government, liberal institutions, and a street police have pretty well put a stop to such proceedings even there. the best account i have ever read of lisbon and its people, as they were before the french revolution changed affairs not a little in most of the countries of europe, is to be found in beckford's "visit to the convents of alcobaca and batalha," and in his "tour to italy and portugal." there is a rich, racy humour in his descriptions, which has seldom been surpassed. at one of the convents a dance is proposed for the entertainment of the illustrious strangers, and while a few act as musicians, the greater number of the oleaginous, obese monks tuck up their frocks, and begin sliding and whirling and gliding about with as much gusto as a number of school-girls at play. but we must be off to sea again. we lionised lisbon, and paid a visit to cintra, but as no adventure occurred worthy of note to any of our party, i will not enter into details. once more the "frolic" breasted the waves of the atlantic, her course being for fair cadiz. on the third day after leaving the tagus, we dropped our anchor off that bright, smiling city. its flat-roofed houses give it somewhat of an eastern look, but it is far cleaner than any eastern city. the houses are built after the moorish fashion, and very like the residences excavated at pompeii. the colouring of the outside is more in accordance with the taste of the luxurious romans in the days of their degeneracy, than with that of the ancient greeks, which made them satisfied with softer hues; while the interior, on the other hand, is as cool and simple as the purest taste can make it. no sooner had we furled sails than all hands were eager to go on shore, to have a glimpse at the often talked of mantilla-wearing, fair, flirting, fascinating gaditanas. the gig was lowered, and on shore we went. we were not disappointed in the appearance of cadiz. the streets are narrow, that the sun of that torrid clime may not penetrate into them, and those only who have lived in a southern latitude can appreciate the luxury of having a cool, shady road in which to walk. verandas in front of every window reach nearly half-way overhead; they are closely barred, and sometimes glazed, so that no impertinent eye can penetrate their recesses. these verandas are full of flowers, and overhung with ivy or other luxuriant creepers. the fronts of the houses are ornamented with various colours, as red, blue, yellow, green, and other tints; while the separation between each house and each floor is marked by lines of red, thus giving the whole street a singularly bright and cheerful appearance. the gateway is the pride of a cadiz house. many we passed were very handsome. it was pleasant to look through them into the interior, where the column-surrounded patios with cool, sparkling fountains in their centres, and shrubs and flowers of every hue, were indeed most refreshing to the senses. every house is a square, with one or more patios in the centre, their only roof the bright blue sky. into this court of columns all the rooms of the house open. shade and coolness are the great things sought for in that clime. we wandered up and down the narrow streets till we began to wish that some one would take compassion on us and ask us in; but nobody did, and our only satisfaction was the belief that we created a mighty sensation in the bosoms of numberless lovely damsels whose bright eyes we saw flashing at us through the thickly-barred jalouses. "ah, my good fellows, but you did not see their small noses, thick lips, and swarthy skins," observed that unsentimental fellow, bubble, thus cruelly depriving us of the only consolation we enjoyed. the fact was that at that early hour of the day no one goes abroad who can stay at home, except, as the spaniards say, dogs and englishmen, putting the canine tribe before the biped. fatigue drove us into a cafe, where we took some refreshment, and in the evening we were somewhat repaid by watching the crowds of bewitching damsels and gay cavaliers, who sauntered forth to enjoy the cool air, and each other's conversation. cadiz is joined to the mainland by a narrow strip of sand, deprived of which it would be an island. opposite to it, across the bay, is port st. mary's, the port of xeres, where the sherry wine is embarked. the next day we visited that place to taste some of its celebrated wines. we were much captivated with some deliciously dry mansanilla, inferior as it is in flavour, however, to the still more valuable amontillado. but interesting as was our visit to cadiz to ourselves, attractive as were its far-famed dames, and delicious as were its wines, my readers will undoubtedly rather hear some of the more stirring events of our cruise. away, away, once more we went, bounding over the blue ocean. we were, however, destined not to find ourselves so soon inside the mediterranean as we expected. a dead calm came on, and for many hours we lay sweltering under a sun not much less fierce than that of the tropics. it was very tantalising to remain thus almost in sight of the entrance of that classic sea we all wished to behold, and yet not be able to get there. once within the influence of that strange current which from age to age has unweariedly flowed into that mighty basin, and yet never has filled it, we should have advanced with sufficient rapidity. another whole day tried our patience, and hearty had begun to declare that, after all, he thought the mediterranean could not be worth visiting, when, on the morning of the third day, a breeze sprung up, and the cutter began to slip through the water towards the straits. the chief strength of the current is in the centre, far out of reach of shot and shell from the shore on either side. i mention this because many people have a notion that the fortress of gibraltar defends the entrance to the straits. the fact is, that the narrowest part is seven and a quarter miles wide; but that narrowest part we passed through at a distance of fifteen miles from gibraltar, before we reached it. we did not, indeed, see the rock before we had passed the narrows. the distance from the rock to ceuta, opposite to it on the african coast, is twelve miles. gibraltar is formed by a tongue of land three miles long and one broad, with a sandbank joining it to the main, and terminating with a high promontory. no one ever expected to make it defend the straits, even before steamers were introduced. the heaviest guns are turned towards spain; at the same time the sea-side is made inaccessible by scarping. below the rock is a belt of level land, on which the modern town is built. the rock has the form of a lofty ridge with three elevations on it, one at each end, and one in the centre. that in the centre is the highest, and has the flagstaff planted on it. when we landed, we went through the wonderful galleries excavated in the rock. these excavations have been going on since the time of the moors, who, i believe, made by far the largest number of them. they were wonderful fellows, those moors. i have always felt a vast respect for them when i have beheld their remains in the south of spain. the reason of their success is, that they were always in earnest in whatever they undertook. however, i don't want to talk here about the moors. gibraltar is a very curious place, and well worth a visit; with its excavated galleries, its heavy guns, its outward fortifications, its zig-zag roads, its towers and batteries, its narrow streets, its crowded houses, its ragged rocks, and its troops of monkeys, the only specimens of the family of simia, which reside, i believe, in a wild state in europe. gibraltar, in reality, from its geological formation, belongs rather to africa than to europe, it being evidently cut off from the african mountains, and having no connection with those of europe. it is a question for naturalists to solve how the monkeys came there--i don't pretend to do so. we brought up in gibraltar bay, where the yacht lay very comfortably, and so do now our men-of-war. should, however, a war break out with spain, they would find the place too hot to hold them, as the bay is completely commanded by the spanish coast, where batteries could speedily be erected, nor could the rock afford the ships any protection. now i have talked enough about gibraltar; i'll however just describe it, like a big tadpole caught by the tail as it was darting away towards africa. we spent some pleasant days there, and were very hospitably treated by some military friends in the garrison. malta, the isles of greece, and the levant, was our destination. i did not fail to make inquiries respecting sandgate; and, curious enough, i fell in with a merchant who had in his youth fought in the greek war of independence. he told me that a youth of that name, and who in every way answered sandgate's description, had come out from england and joined the patriot forces. he was a brave, dashing fellow, but most troublesome from his unwillingness to submit to any of the necessary restraints of discipline, and utterly unprincipled. he had, however, plenty of talent, and managed to ingratiate himself with some of the greek chiefs, though the more respectable, as did the english philhellenes, stood aloof from him. "the truth is," said my friend, "many of those greek chiefs had been notorious pirates themselves, and i have no doubt sandgate learned his trade from them." "i suspect very strongly that the man you describe and sandgate are one and the same person," i remarked. "it is curious that i should so soon have gained a clew to him." the next day i again met my friend. "i have some further account of sandgate to give you," said he, taking me by the button; "he'll give some little trouble before his career is closed, i suspect. my smyrna correspondent is here, and he tells me that he knew of sandgate's being there, and of his selling his yacht. he served with me in the war, and knew him also: consequently, when he made his appearance he kept his eye upon him. he traced him on board a vessel, in which he went to one of the greek islands. from thence he crossed to a smaller island owned by a chief who had once been a notorious pirate, and was strongly suspected of still following the same trade in a more quiet way. there he lost sight of him; but several piracies had been committed during the spring by a craft which it was suspected had been fitted out in the island in question." "we certainly have in a most unexpected way discovered a clew to mr sandgate's whereabouts and course of life," i remarked. "it would almost read like a romance were it to be put into print." "oh, we have had many heroes of that description from time to time in the mediterranean," replied my friend. "there was that fellow delano, who was hung at malta a few years back, he was an englishman--or a yankee, i believe rather. how many piracies he had committed i do not know before he was found out, but at last he tried to scuttle a brig, which did not go down as he thought she had, so happily his intended victims escaped and informed against him. he was captured by a man-of-war's boat's crew, and he and his followers were carried in chains to malta. then there was a very daring fellow, a greek, zappa by name, who commanded a brig, and on one occasion attacked an austrian man-of-war which he believed had treasure on board, and took her. then there has been no end of greek pirates of high or low degree. gentlemanly cut-throats, princes and counts with fleets under their command, down to the disreputable owners of small boats which lie in wait behind headlands to rob unwary merchantmen who cannot defend themselves. oh! the mediterranean has reason to be proud of the achievements of its mariners from the times of the pious aeneas down to the present day." from all i heard of sandgate, indeed, i felt more and more thankful that miss manners had so fortunately escaped from his power. nothing worthy of note occurred to us during our very pleasant stay at gibraltar. the day before we had arranged to leave the place, who should we fall in with but jack piper, a lieutenant in the navy, and a friend and old messmate of tom mizen's. "why, i thought we had left you at plymouth!" i exclaimed as i wrung his hand. "so you did," he answered; "but i had been ordered to come out here and to join my ship. you know old rullock, mizen's uncle. he had just before commissioned the `zebra' brig, for this station, and as she was the first vessel to sail, i got a passage in her. we had a fast run, and they only put me on shore here yesterday while she has gone to malta. we had mrs and miss mizen on board, and mrs mizen's niece, miss susan simms" (jack, i knew, rather affected miss susan, and he looked very conscious as he mentioned her name). "very nice girl," he continued; "so kind of her, too, to come out just at an hour's notice to take care of her cousin, miss rullock, you know. you haven't heard, perhaps, that they are rather alarmed about miss laura. caught a cold, somewhat ugly symptoms. think her consumptive, so it was judged best to bring her out to spend a winter at malta, and as her uncle was coming, the opportunity was a good one." "ah! this news will be matter of interest to hearty," thought i. "we shall now see whether his feelings for miss mizen had any root, or whether he was affected by a mere passing fancy." "poor girl! i am sorry to hear of her illness," said i aloud. "malta is as good a place as she could come to, and i hope the change will do her good. we shall see her there, i dare say. have you any commands for the ladies?" "say i hope that my ship will be there before long," answered piper, absolutely blushing through the well-bronzed hue of his cheek. he had been appointed as first lieutenant of the "thunder," sloop-of-war. she was expected at the rock every day. jack piper was not very dissimilar in appearance and manner to porpoise, and he was the same sort of good-natured, frank, open-hearted fellow--just the man to do a gallant, noble action, and not to say a word about it, simply because it would not occur to him that it was any thing out of the way. there are plenty of such men in the service, and england may be proud of them. on quitting piper i went on board the yacht, where we had agreed to assemble in the evening, to be ready for a start by daybreak. should hearty not have heard of the "zebra's" touching at the rock, i resolved to say nothing about the matter. if he really was in love with miss mizen, i might chance to spoil him as a companion, and if he did not care about her, there was no harm done. chapter seventeen. a suspicious sail--an expected visit from an uninvited stranger--we prepare to receive him. the rock of gibraltar was fading from our sight in the far distance, as the sun in a blaze of glory went down into his ocean bed between the pillars of hercules. the yacht lay in a dead calm, her canvas idly flapping for want of more useful employment, while every spar and rope was reflected in the mirror-like surface of the watery expanse; yet she was not immovable, for the current which runs in at the mouth of the mediterranean was sending her on at the rate of some knots an hour, over the ground pretty well in her direct course. we sat on deck and smoked our cigars, and spun many a yarn, and told many an adventure of bygone days. it was with difficulty that we could persuade ourselves to turn in, so enjoyable was the cool sea atmosphere after the burnt-up, baked, oveny air of the old rock. the next morning, when we came on deck, although there had not been an air in all the heavens, as snow informed us, we had sunk gibraltar completely beneath the sea. that day passed much like the previous one. now and then a light breeze from the westward filled the cutter's sails, and made her step through the water at a speed which must have astonished some of the ancient fish, which looked up at her from out of their caverned homes beneath the waves. as the day wore on we made out, away to the westward, the mastheads of a brig. as we gradually rose them it appeared that she was a polacca-rigged brig, probably a greek laden with corn, bound out of the straits, perhaps to supply the insatiable maw of old england with food. we had just made this discovery when we were summoned to dinner. to people who have nothing to do, any small thing affords subject of interest. i remember a story of two noblemen, shut up at a country inn on a rainy day, betting large sums on the speed of two small flies running over a pane of glass, and of others equally wise, staking larger amounts than many a naval and military officer receives in his life-time, on two spots of rain, the bet being a drawn one by the drops uniting. when we returned on deck after dinner no change had taken place. the canvas of the cutter gave every now and then an idle flap, while the sails of the greek brig seemed very much in the same humour. we, however, were so far better off than the stranger, because the current was sweeping us, slowly indeed, but still in the direction we wanted to go, while it was carrying her away from it. still we appeared by some mysterious influence to near each other. it was not, however, for some time that we discovered that her crew were towing her ahead, and that she had also long sweeps out, which probably sent her through the water two or three knots an hour. "i thought those greek seamen were idle dogs, who would not think of taking so much trouble as these fellows appear to do, even to save their lives." "oh, there's little enough to be said in their favour," replied porpoise. "these fellows want to get through the straits, as they fancy they shall find a fair wind outside, so they take a little trouble now in the hopes of perfect idleness by and by." odd as it may seem, i could not help fancying that there was something strange about that brig, yet what it was of course i could not tell. "well, i shall always think favourably of the industry of greeks, after watching those fellows," said carstairs. the strange brig kept creeping up closer and closer to us; still, except an occasional glance which we took of her, as being the only object in sight, she appeared in no way to excite the interest of my messmates. i, however, as i remarked, clearly remember to have had a strange feeling of doubt and mistrust as i looked at her. it is impossible to account for similar sensations, experienced frequently by people on various occasions; had she been a rakish-looking, low, black schooner, with a wide spread of canvas, met with in the latitude of the west indies, i might very naturally have guessed her to be a pirate or slaver; but the brig in sight was a harmless, honest-looking trader, and still i could not help frequently during the day looking at her, very much as i should have done had she been of the character of the craft i had described. "bubble!" exclaimed hearty, "you know that you have promised us a tale of your own composition, and you have very frequently been missed from the deck and found pen in hand in the cabin, covering sundry sheets of paper, and when we have been wrapped in slumber you have been supposed to have sat up continuing your work. come, man, have compassion on our curiosity, and give us the result of your lucubrations." "oh, no! spare my blushes," answered will, with a comic sentimental look: "i don't aim at the world-wide celebrity of an author: i am content to please a select circle of friends like yourselves. who would read a story published under the signature of will bubble? no! i say, let me float on adown the quiet stream of insignificance. the post of safety is a humble station--hum!" "over-modesty, over-modesty, will," answered hearty. "pluck up courage, man; you will do well if you try." the best of the joke was, that the rogue, as i well know, had for many a year past been dabbling in literature, and often had i enjoyed a quiet laugh when reading an article from his pen. "well, perhaps some day i'll try," said he, demurely. "hillo! what can the fellow be wanting?" exclaimed porpoise, interrupting our talking (i won't call it conversation). we all turned our eyes in the direction in which he was looking. the brig had lowered a boat, which with rapid strokes was pulling towards us. "she seems to have a good many hands in her," he added, holding his glass to his eye. "i don't quite like the look of her." "nor do i either, i confess," said i. "there are some craft in this sea not altogether honest, we must remember, though they are generally met with higher up towards the levant." "what ought we to do, then?" asked hearty. "just serve out the cutlasses and pistols, and cast the guns loose," said porpoise. "tell the people to keep an eye on the strangers, and if more than two or three attempt to come on board, to tumble them into their boat again. there's not the slightest danger if we put on a bold front, but if we are caught napping, i would not be answerable for the consequences." chapter eighteen. the stranger comes on board--the greek chief--a white squall--what has become of the brig?--the suspicious stranger again--preparations for a fight. the advice porpoise gave seemed so rational that although it might have gone somewhat against the grain with so thorough a john bull as hearty to put himself in a posture of defence before he was attacked, snow was summoned aft to superintend the distribution of the contents of the arm-chest. the men buckled on their cutlasses with looks of no small glee, snapping the locks of their pistols to try them before loading, as they eyed the advancing boat. "there's no fear, gentlemen, but what they'd give an account of twice the number of chaps as are aboard that craft, if they ever come to close quarters," said snow, approvingly casting his eye over the crew. i could not help thinking the same, for a finer set of broad-shouldered, wide-chested fellows i never saw, as they stood around us with their necks bare, and the sleeves of their blue shirts tucked up above the elbows, handling their weapons with the fond look which a child bestows on a newly-given toy. "go forward again, my men, and keep on the opposite side to which the boat comes," said porpoise. "just stand about as if you did not suspect there was any thing wrong; very likely there may not be, you know, and perhaps the greek has lost his reckoning, and is sending aboard us only to ask his whereabouts." "a craft like that wouldn't send away a boat with twelve men in her, or more, to ask such a question," observed snow to old sleet; "i know better nor that." "you may well say so," answered the old man. "i've heard of such rum tricks being played, that i always like to be prepared for squalls." i must say that after the strange misgivings i had experienced in the early part of the day, when the polacca-brig first hove in sight, i was well satisfied to see the yacht put in a perfect state of defence. it was more than possible that the stranger might after all be an honest trader, and that her crew might be not a little surprised to find an english yacht with so formidable an appearance. still again, i have always seen the wisdom of not despising an antagonist, and of being as prepared as circumstances will allow for any emergency. the boat, a heavy launch, was meantime advancing towards us. i examined her narrowly with my glass; she had what looked very like a gun mounted in the bows, though a capote, or piece of dark canvas, was thrown over it. she pulled twelve oars, beside which three or four other people sat in the stern-sheets. i observed porpoise, who had been, as may be supposed, attentively watching the boat, go up to the foremost gun, and draw the shot. "carpenter," said he, to chips, "bring me up a shovel of old nails and bits of iron." the articles in question were soon brought to him, and he proceeded forthwith to load the gun with them up to the muzzle. "sleet," said he, "you have charge of this gun; if our friends there show fight, and i give the word, slap this mouthful right in among them; it will soon bring them to reason, i guess." "ay, ay, sir," answered the old man, slapping the breech of his gun with a quiet smile, "i'll make her speak, depend on't." thus prepared, we awaited the arrival of the suspicious-looking strangers. had there been any wind, we might easily have prevented their coming on board by running out of their way, but as it was we could not help ourselves without fighting. in a few minutes more they pulled alongside, rather awkwardly; however, we did not order them to keep off, as it was agreed it would not be wise to show any suspicion of them. they were all dressed in the greek costume; one of the men who sat in the stern-sheets, a full-bearded fellow, with a capote thrown over his shoulders and a fez on his head, stood up in the boat, and in broken english asked to come on board. "oh! let him," said hearty, who began to fancy we had been over-cautious. "there can't possibly be any harm." the side was accordingly manned, and our friend with the capote, followed by two less ill-looking fellows, stepped unceremoniously on board. "i speak to de captain," said the stranger, in a blunt tone. "i am the captain, at your service," answered porpoise, standing before him, and preventing his farther advance on deck. "oh! i come to know where you come from," said the greek stranger, casting his eyes furtively round the deck, as if to discover the state of defence in which we might be. the look of our sturdy fellows, with their cutlasses by their sides, might possibly have surprised him, and at all events he must have seen that there was little chance of surprising us. "we come from england," answered porpoise, bluntly. "a civil question requires a civil answer, but i don't know by what right you ask it." "where you bound for?" continued the greek, not noticing the last remark it seemed. "malta, alexandria, smyrna, and a few other places up the levant," said porpoise. "ah! will you take letter for me? you do me great favour," said the greek, putting his hand in his bosom. while the greek was speaking, i had been eyeing him narrowly from the after-part of the vessel, where i had placed myself. most of my readers have heard of the famed vanderdecken, the terrible flying dutchman, who in his phantom ship goes cruising about to the southward of the cape of good hope, sailing right into the eye of the heaviest gale. when he falls in with a vessel, he comes aboard, and requests a packet he presents may be taken on shore. just such another as vanderdecken did our present visitor appear, except that the dutchman is habited in a somewhat different costume to the greek, in broad-brimmed hat, big-buttoned waistcoat, and wide breeches. by the way porpoise looked at him, i had a notion some such idea was passing through his mind. perhaps he suspected that the gentleman had a pistol instead of a letter inside the folds of his vest. the boat's crew meantime sat scowling at us, and surveying the vessel with a no friendly look; i guessed, indeed, that nothing would have given them greater pleasure than to have been able to jump on board, and to cut all our throats. "we shall be happy to take your letter or any commands on shore," answered porpoise, putting his hand in his pocket in imitation of the greek. the stranger furtively eyed the movement of his hand, as much as to say, "why, have you got a pistol there likewise?" however, withdrawing his own hand from his bosom, he exclaimed, "ah! i have by some omission left my letter on board." the man spoke with as downright an english pronunciation as i ever heard in my life. pretty well for a greek, thought i, stepping forward to examine his features more narrowly. i had had my suspicions from the time he stepped on board; so, it appeared, had tom newton. there could be very little doubt about the matter; the man who stood before us in the guise of a greek, was no other than the _ci-devant_ pirate--slaver-smuggler, the outlaw miles sandgate. i thought his keen eye glanced at my countenance for a moment, as if he recognised me; but so completely did he maintain his self-possession, that he did not exhibit the slightest sign of fear or hesitation. he bit his lips though, as if he found that he had betrayed himself by speaking english too fluently, and he instantly fell back into his former mode of expression. porpoise had either not remarked his slip of the tongue, or thought it best not to comment on it. "i go send letter aboard," he continued, stepping back a pace as if to be ready to spring into his boat. his crew in the mean time had begun to vociferate something i could not understand. he replied to them in the same language, and i have no doubt it was to tell them that their enterprise was fruitless, and that it was not quite so easy to catch the crew of an english yacht napping as they might have supposed. he still hesitated to take his departure. some plan or other was passing through his fertile, ever-active brain. perhaps he did not suspect that i had recognised him. however, whatever might have been his intentions, he was summoned hurriedly into the boat by his crew. he turned hastily round and cast his eye to the northward, so did i and porpoise. there, rising out of the water as it were, was a small white cloud, which, as we looked, every instant increased in size. "you'd better shorten sail, or you'll repent it," exclaimed the seeming greek, as he leaped into his boat. the crew pulled lustily away in the direction of their own vessel. nothing comes on so rapidly and gives so little time for preparation as does a white squall in the mediterranean. porpoise, taking the advice offered, gave the necessary orders. all hands rushed to the halliards and downhauls, but before a rope could be let go the squall was upon us. a drill of white foam came rushing towards the cutter, driven on by some irresistible power, which at the same time curled up the whole hitherto calm and shining sea into rolling, breaking waves. our eyes were almost blinded with the salt mist which dashed over us. terrific was the blow we received. the cutter having no steerage-way offered a dead resistance to it. over she went as does a stately tree, its stem cut through by the woodman's deadly axe and saw. "hold on! hold on for your lives!" sung out porpoise. there was good reason. i thought she would never rise again. the water rose up her decks. we began to look at boats and spars as the only hope of safety. then shrouds and stays and bolts gave way, and the stout mast cracked off at the deck with a loud crash; and the little craft rising on an even keel floated in safety, but presented a forlorn wreck compared to the gay and gallant trim in which she had lately appeared. not a moment was to be lost in ascertaining whether the cutter had received any vital damage, and in endeavouring to put her to rights. everybody was busily engaged in the work. hearty and our landsmen friends took the matter very coolly. "just sing out where you want us to lend a hand, and we are four men," cried hearty, pulling and hauling away with a will, while we were getting in the wreck of our mast and spars. the drag of the rigging astern brought the vessel up into the wind's eye, and then she lay pitching and bobbing away into the short seas, sending the spray flying over us like a regular shower-bath, and surrounding us with a mist impervious to the sight. it was heavy work, and as part of the bulwarks had been knocked away there was no little danger of being washed overboard. where, however, all labour with a will, the hardest task is soon performed; and no fellows could have worked harder than did our crew of yachtsmen. before, however, the craft was in any way put to rights, the squall and its effects on the sea had completely passed away, but night coming down had shrouded us in total darkness. no one had thought of the greek brig or her boat, and now not a glimpse of either was to be perceived. what had become of her? had the boat with the rascal sandgate been swamped? had the brig been caught by the squall and gone down? such had been the fate of many a craft in the mediterranean. when we had got the yacht somewhat to rights we made inquiries among the men, but no one had observed her. old sleet, it was said, had watched the boat pulling away for her even during the hurly-burly of the squall. i therefore called him up to examine him more particularly. "when we was on our beam-ends, and i thought we was over for good, still i couldn't help keeping my eye on the boat," said the old man; "i can't say as how i liked the look of that ere curious chap the greek captain who came aboard us, and as for his crew, a bigger set of cut-throats i never saw. well, thinks i to myself, if the boat goes to the bottom, and all her people goes in her, there's no great harm done: but if she floats and gains the brig, they may just come back when we are not prepared for them, and try to knock us all on the head; but, says i to myself, there's no use talking about it, for the gentlemen won't believe such a thing possible, and i shall only get laughed at for my pains." i was very much inclined to agree with the old man, that if our greek friend had escaped drowning, and could discover our whereabout, he would be apt to try his hand at playing us some scurvy trick; but i said nothing to this effect. i, however, resolved to speak to porpoise, so that we might be prepared to resist any attack he might attempt to make on us. porpoise was rather inclined to laugh at my fears. "my belief is that the fellow went to the bottom," he replied. "serve him right, too, if he is the rascal you suppose him; or if he got aboard his ship he saw enough of us to know that we should prove rather a tough morsel, should he attempt to swallow us." a council of war having been called, it was resolved that we should try to get back to gibraltar as fast as we could. to effect this, however, it would be necessary to rig jury-masts, and this could not very well be done till daylight. we proposed turning the cutter into a schooner or lugger, and happily, as we had saved most of our spars and canvas, we expected to have no great difficulty in getting sufficient sail on her to navigate with ease the poor little closely-shorn craft. i have often had in my naval career to pass through nights of toil and anxiety, and this gave every promise of being one of that character. in a few hours we had gathered in all our ruffled feathers, or, in other words, our masts and spars and sails and rigging; and having stowed them along the decks as best we could, there we lay floating helplessly like a log on the water. not having discarded my suspicions of the polacca-brig, notwithstanding my fatigue i felt no inclination to go to sleep. i now was left in charge of the deck while porpoise and the rest of my messmates turned in, all standing. i walked the deck for some time, ever and anon turning my gaze upward to the dark blue vault of heaven glittering with a thousand stars, each but a centre of some mighty system, each more complex and marvellous, probably, than our own. i thought of the all-potent being who made them as well as all the wondrous specimens of animal life which dwell on this globe we call our own, and my heart swelled with gratitude to him who had preserved me and my shipmates from the danger to which we had been exposed. my spirit, as i thought, seemed to take its flight through the calm atmosphere, and to wander far far away among those distant spheres. how long it was away i know not. i was not conscious of the existence of my body on the surface of the globe. a splash aroused me from my reveries. it was caused by a fish leaping out of its liquid home to avoid some monster of the deep wishing to make a supper off it. it called me back to earth and things earthly. my first impulse was to cast my eye round the horizon. it was rather a circumscribed one at that hour of darkness. once i made the full circuit and could see nothing. i took a few more turns on deck, and again i swept my eye round the watery circle more slowly than before. as i reached the south-eastern point of the heavens i was certain i saw a dark object. i rubbed my eyes. the sails of a vessel appeared before me, rising up like a thin dark pencil-line against the sky. i wetted my fingers and held up my hand. the cold struck it on that side. whatever she might be she was well to windward of us. i took the night-glass, which hung on brackets just inside the companion-hatch. she was still too far off to enable me to make out what she was. i had not, however, forgotten my suspicions of the polacca. the stranger was evidently approaching us. if she was the greek, her crew would scarcely resist the temptation of attempting to plunder us. still i felt that my suspicions were almost absurd, and i did not like to arouse my friends without some better grounds for my fears. i, however, felt it would be wise not to run the risk of being taken altogether unprepared. i therefore went up alongside old snow--so we called him, though he was young enough to be old sleet's son. i was not long in waking him up to the proper pitch of caution by narrating a variety of stories about pirates and slavers and savages, and such like gentry, with a due admixture of instances where people from carelessness were caught napping and lost their lives. "now," said i, "let us get these spars cleared away enough to work the guns. the watch on deck will do it without rousing the rest. we'll have a supply up of round-shot and ammunition. the people have not restored their pistols and cutlasses to the arm-chest. send a couple of hands to collect them all ready, and then if yonder stranger proves to be the polacca, and wishes to taste our quality, we'll let her have her will, and show her what we are made of." i spoke thus confidently that there might be no risk of taking any of the pluck out of the people. i cannot say, however, that i at all liked the notion of a brush with the well-manned and probably well-armed polacca-brig in our present dismantled condition, however little i might have feared her at close quarters had we been all to rights. i watched the approach of the stranger, therefore, with no little anxiety. she was evidently bearing right down upon us, though, as there was but little wind, her progress was slow. the hours of the night wore on. i was leaning against the wreck of the mast which lay fore and aft along the deck, and at length i fell asleep. i do not know how long i had slept when i heard porpoise's voice close to me. "hillo, brine! what in the name of wonder is that away there to windward?" he exclaimed. "the polacca-brig, there's no doubt about it," i answered, as i beheld a vessel like a dark phantom stealing up towards us. i then explained to him the preparations i had made in case the brig should really be of the piratical character we suspected, and at the same time inclined to attack us. this relieved his mind not a little. my belief, however, was that the greek might not have seen us. she might, of course, have calculated our whereabouts. perhaps even now she might not see us. perhaps, also, as porpoise suggested, if the boat was swamped in the squall, the rest of the crew would probably cruise about to look for their companions. he agreed with me, therefore, that we need not yet rouse up hearty and our other two friends. by the by, in consequence of all the delays we must endure, i was doubly glad that we had not told hearty of miss mizen's expedition to malta. it would have made him undergo them with much less than his usual philosophy, i suspect. "i doubt if even now the brig sees us," said i as i watched her through the night-glass. so low down in the water as we were, she was very likely to miss us. "see, she is passing us," exclaimed porpoise, after we had watched her for some time. "it is just as well she should miss us, for in our present state we could not exactly do ourselves justice." "perhaps after all our friends may be very well disposed, and in no way inclined to do us any harm," said i, not that i could in reality divest myself of the idea that the polacca was commanded by sandgate, and that he would have delighted to do us all the mischief in his power. with daylight, however, i don't think i should fear him, even now, i thought to myself. it still wanted nearly an hour to sunrise, and daylight in that clime does not come very long before the glorious luminary of day rushes up from his ocean bed. we hoped by that time that the brig would have pretty well run us out of sight. still neither porpoise nor i felt inclined to go below again. we intended, indeed, to rouse out all hands to get up the jury-masts the moment we had light to work by. we, however, were not so clear of danger as we fancied. the brig had got about a mile to leeward of us, when we saw her brace up her yards, and, close-hauled, she stood back so as soon to fetch us. there was no longer any time to spare. "rouse up all hands fore and aft," sung out porpoise, with a stentorian voice. in a minute every one was on deck busily employed in casting loose the guns, in priming pistols, and buckling on cutlasses. "if the fellow will but come to close quarters, we have no reason to fear him," exclaimed our gallant skipper, surveying his crew with no little pride. "i only wish we may have a brush with him," added hearty; "it would tell well in the club; only i wish we had our mast standing." i cannot say that i participated altogether in the satisfaction of my friends. the brig, if she did attack us, i knew, we must find an ugly customer, and the pirates could only venture to do so with the full intention of sending every one of us, with the yacht into the bargain, to the bottom, on the principle that dead men tell no tales. the greek was not long in showing us his intentions. no sooner had he got us within range of his guns, than brailing up his courses and lowering his topsails, he opened his fire upon our almost helpless craft. happily for us his gunnery was very bad, and he evidently had a fancy for long bowls, and a wholesome dread of coming to close quarters with us. our people went cheerily to their guns, not a bit afraid of our big enemy. "only just do ye come on, ye confounded scoundrels, and we'll just give ye a taste of what we are made of," sung out tom hall, a broad-shouldered fellow, standing six feet high or more in his stockings, as he shook his cutlass in an attitude of defiance at the enemy; and no one was better able to give an account of them than he would have been when the day's work was over. will bubble threw off his coat, fastened a silk handkerchief round his waist and another round his head, and worked away at his little gun in fine style. carstairs did the same in a more deliberate manner, whistling the fag end of a hunting song. if we had possessed guns four times the size of ours, i verily believe, crippled as were, we should very soon have sent our antagonists to the bottom, instead of running the risk of going there ourselves. finding his shot fall short or wide of us, he ran on a little way, and then tacking, stood closer up to us. chapter nineteen. the engagement--our desperate condition--a friend in sight--our enemy flies--malta. by this time the first faint streaks of early dawn had appeared in the sky; but in that latitude the sun does not take long to get above the horizon, and daylight was on us almost as soon as the brig had again got us within range of her guns. two or three shots struck our hull, and at the same time the enemy opened a fire of musketry on us; but the pirates did not prove themselves better marksmen with their small-arms than they had hitherto done with their heavier guns. "oh, i wish the rascals would but attempt to run us aboard!" exclaimed hearty. "to think of their impudence in daring to knock holes in the side of my yacht!" "there spoke a true briton," observed bubble as he once more ran out his gun. "he does not think any thing of being shot at; but the idea of having his property injured, or his home invaded, rouses all his anger. here goes though; i'll see if we can't pay them off in their own coin, with some change in our favour." will was a capital marksman, and as cool as a cucumber, which was more than most of our men were, though not one was wanting in pluck. he pulled the trigger, and as i watched to see the effects of his fire, i saw two men fall on the pirate's deck, while some white splinters flying from the mainmast showed us that the shot had, as well, done some damage to the vessel herself. "hurra! bravo, bubble!" i shouted, and the crew echoed my cry, which, rising in full chorus, must have reached the ears of our enemy, and showed them that we were not likely to prove as easy a prey as they might have fancied. "another such a shot as that, and i believe they will up helm and be off," i exclaimed. "i'll do my best," answered bubble, fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat, for the weather was very hot, and he had been making, for him, somewhat unusual exertions. will now trained his gun with great care: a great deal depended on a fortunate shot. "if we could but bring down one of his masts, or make a hole through his sides, we should win the day even now," he exclaimed, kneeling down to aim with more deliberation; "a ten-pound note to the man who wounds a mast, or sends a shot between wind and water." as he afterwards acknowledged, the ten pounds was truly a widow's mite with him, for he hadn't another such sum in his locker to back it. "i'll make it twenty," cried hearty, who really seemed to enjoy the excitement of the adventure; "come, let us see who will win it." "i have," cried bubble, jumping up and clapping his hands like a schoolboy, as he watched with intense eagerness his shot strike the hull of the brig just at the water-line, sending the white splinters flying in every direction. "fairly won, bubble, fairly won!" we all exclaimed; "if they don't plug that hole pretty quickly, they will soon find their jackets wetter than they like." in return for the mischief we had done him, the pirate let fly his whole broadside at us. he was every instant drawing nearer and nearer, either to give his guns more effect, or to attempt carrying us by boarding. he probably fancied that we were by this time weakened by loss of men, as he very likely was not aware of the little effect produced by his own guns. dismasted as we were, and low in the water, we presented, indeed, a somewhat difficult mark to hit. the pirate's approach gave us another advantage, as we were now able to bring our own musketry into play, which somewhat made up for the lightness of our guns. we had a great advantage also in the rapid way we were able to load our guns, which were of brass, while our opponents' were probably of iron. our muskets, too, were kept constantly at work; ruggles, the steward, and pepper, the boy, being set to load them as fast as they were discharged, while carstairs had a first-rate rifle, with which he picked off every fellow whose red cap appeared above the bulwarks with as much _sang froid_ as he would have knocked over a partridge on the 1st of september. as our yachtsmen had had no practice with their guns, they were not particularly good shots, so that none of them surpassed bubble in the accuracy of their aim, greatly to his delight. the enemy's shot now began to fall rather thicker around us, while two or three of our people were hit with their musket-balls. none of them were hurt sufficiently to make them leave the deck; we could not, however, expect that this state of impunity would long continue. i every now and then turned an eye on bubble to watch his energetic proceedings, though i had enough to do to load and fire away with my own musket. on a sudden, as he jumped up to watch the effect of his shot, i saw him stagger back and fall on the deck; i sprang forward to raise him up, "oh, it's nothing, nothing," he exclaimed, turning, however, at the same time very pale; "only the wind of a shot or a little more; but it's a new sensation; took me by surprise; just set me on my legs again, and i shall be all to rights soon." this, however, was more than i could do, poor fellow. he had been hit, and badly too, i was afraid; i sent ruggles down for a glass of brandy and water. "just bring up a flask, and a jug of water also," said i, "others may want it." bubble was much revived by the draught, and binding a handkerchief over his side, which was really wounded, though not so badly as i feared, with the greatest pluck he again went to his gun. during this interval the enemy had ceased firing, having shot some way ahead of us, but he now again tacked, and, looking well up to windward, stood towards us on a line which would enable him to run us aboard, if he pleased, or to strike us so directly amidships, that there was every probability of his sinking us. this last proceeding was the one most to be feared, and i felt sure that he would not scruple so to do. i could not tell if my friends saw the terrific danger we were in; i thought not, for they went on peppering away with their fire-arms, and laughing and cheering, as if the whole affair was a very good joke. i confess that my heart sank within me as i contemplated the fate which awaited us. "how soon will those gay and gallant spirits be quenched in death," i thought. "how completely will our remorseless enemies triumph. they have all this time been merely playing with us as a cat does with a mouse." five minutes more would, i calculated, consummate the catastrophe. a minute had, however, scarcely passed, when i saw the brig square away her yards; and putting up her helm, off she went before the wind. her courses were let fall; topgallant-sails were set, studding-sails and royals soon followed. every stitch of canvas she could carry was got on her, while not the slightest further attention did she pay to us. i rubbed my eyes, for i could scarcely believe my senses. we, however, continued firing away as long as there was the chance of a shot reaching her, and then our men set up such a jovial, hearty cheer, which if it could have reached the ears of the pirates, would have convinced them that we had still an abundance of fight left in us. what had caused the enemy so suddenly to haul off was now the wonder. at all events, i trust that we were thankful for our unexpected deliverance. when i pointed out to my companions the danger we had been in, they at once saw it themselves. porpoise had seen it, indeed, all along, but had concealed his apprehension as i had done mine. "the rascal found we were too tough a morsel to swallow, so thought he had better let us alone at once," said hearty. "i cannot think that," i observed; "he had some other reason, depend on it." i was right; the mystery was soon solved. all hands at once set to work to fit and rig the jury-masts, when we were called from our occupation by a cheer from bubble, whose wound made it clearly dangerous for him to exert himself in any way. "a sail, a sail!" he exclaimed; "a big ship, too, i suspect." i looked in the direction in which he pointed away to windward, where the topsails of a ship appeared rising above the horizon; from their squareness i judged her to be a man-of-war. the rising sun just tinged the weather-side of her canvas, as she bore down on us with a streak of light which made her stand out in bold relief against the deep blue sky. the pirate crew had, of course, seen her from aloft long before we could have done so. she was welcome in every way, as she would probably enable us to get into port. the only provoking part of the business was, that the pirate would in all probability get away with impunity. had she but come on the scene an hour earlier, she would, probably, have been down upon us before either we or the pirate could have seen her, and would most assuredly have nabbed our amigo. "never mind," said porpoise, "the fellow can scarcely get out of the straits, even if he wishes it, and if i ever fall in with him within the boundaries of the mediterranean, i have no fear of not knowing him again; we shall hear more of him by and by, depend on it." our fighting had given us an appetite, so we went to breakfast with no little satisfaction, though we had not much time to spare for it. bubble would not acknowledge that his wound was of consequence, though he let me look to it, as i did to the hurts of the other poor fellows who were hit. from the appearance they presented, i was truly glad that there was a good prospect of their having surgical aid without delay. they did not know, as i did, that their wounds would be far more painful in a few hours than they were at that time, so they made very light of them. as the stranger drew nearer, we made her out to be a sloop-of-war, and the ensign flying from her peak showed her to be british; she had been standing so as to pass a little way to the westward of us. when, however, she made us out, which she did not do till she was quite close to us, she altered her course and was soon hove-to, a few cables' length to leeward. a boat was lowered, and, with an officer in the stern-sheets, came pulling towards us. "what in the name of wonder is the matter?" exclaimed the officer, standing up and surveying us with no little surprise. "why, sprat, the matter is that we have been dismasted in a white squall, which would have sent many a craft to the bottom," answered porpoise, who in the officer recognised an old shipmate; "we since then have been made a target of by a rascally pirate, whose mastheads have scarcely yet sunk beneath the horizon." "if that is the case, we must see if we cannot catch her," answered lieutenant sprat, who was second lieutenant of the corvette. "what, sir! leave us rolling helplessly about here like an empty tub?" exclaimed hearty, in a dolorous tone. "but never mind, if you think you can catch her, i dare say we can take care of ourselves." "i'll report the state of things to captain arden, and learn what he wishes," quoth lieutenant sprat, as he pulled back to his ship. in another minute the corvette's jolly-boat was seen leaving her side, while she, putting up her helm, stood away in the direction the pirate had taken. the jolly-boat soon came alongside, with a midshipman and six men. "captain arden has sent me with the carpenter's mate and some of his crew to help you in," quoth master middie, addressing porpoise; "we'll soon get a new mast into you, and carry you safely to old gib, or wherever you want to go." porpoise looked at him, and evidently felt very much inclined to laugh. he was one of the shortest lads in a midshipman's uniform i ever saw; but he was broad-shouldered, and had a countenance which showed clearly that he very well knew what he was about. "thank you," answered porpoise; "we shall be much beholden to you i doubt not, though we should have been glad if your captain had sent us a doctor as well. may i ask your name, young gentleman?" "mite, sir; anthony mite," answered the midshipman, a little taken aback at porpoise's manner. the old lieutenant did not quite like his patronising airs. "i thought so," observed our worthy skipper; "your father was a shipmate of mine, youngster, and you are very like him." "in knowing my father you knew a brave man, i hope, sir, you will allow," replied master mite, with much spirit. "but i did not know that you were in the service. a better or braver fellow never stepped," answered porpoise, warmly, putting out his hand. "i've no doubt you are worthy of him, youngster. we'll have a yarn about him by and by. however, just now, we must try to get the craft in sailing trim again." small as the young midshipman was in stature, he soon made it evident that he was of the true stuff which forms a hero. he was here, there, and everywhere, pulling and hauling, directing and encouraging. so rapid were his movements, that his body seemed ubiquitous, while the tone of his voice showed that he was well accustomed to command and to be obeyed. we had no reason to complain of either the officer or labourers captain arden had sent us. meantime i had been keeping my eye on the proceedings of the corvette. she at first stood away steadily to the northward and eastward, in the direction the brig had taken, and it seemed evident that she had her in sight; then she altered her course to the westward, but finally disappeared below the horizon, steering nearly due north. "if the man-of-war has still the brig in sight, the latter must be making for some spanish port, where the pirates hope to lie concealed till the search for them is over," i thought to myself. "however, sandgate, if he really is the commander, is up to all sorts of dodges, and will very likely, somehow or other, manage to make his escape." as may be supposed, we watched very anxiously for the re-appearance of the corvette, but the sun went down, and we saw nothing of her. however, we had by this time got up apologies for three masts, and, moreover, managed to make sail on them. it was a great satisfaction to feel the poor little barkie once more slipping through the water, though at a much slower pace than usual. as i feared, both bubble and the men who had been wounded began, towards midnight, to complain somewhat of their hurts. while we were all sitting round the table in the cabin at supper, before turning in, hearty, as porpoise had done, expressed his regret that captain arden had not sent us a surgeon. "oh, we didn't know that any one was hurt," observed mr mite. "but never mind, i understand something of doctoring. i can bleed in first-rate style, i can tell you. don't you think i had better try my hand?" "thank you, they have been bled enough already, i suspect," answered hearty. "i'm afraid no one on board can do much good to them. i only pray the wind may hold, and that we may soon get into gibraltar." but master mite was not so easily turned aside from his purpose of trying his hand as a surgeon. he begged hard that he might, at all events, be allowed to examine the men's wounds. we of course assured our young friend that we did not doubt his surgical talents; but still declined allowing him to operate on any of the yacht's crew. we were not sorry, however, to let him take the middle watch, which he volunteered to do, for both porpoise and i and old snow were regularly worn out. the wind held fair, and there was not much of it. the night passed away quietly, and when morning broke we saw the corvette standing after us. she had been, as i expected, unsuccessful in her chase of the greek brig. she had made all sail after a craft which she took for her, but on coming up with the chase, discovered her to be an honest trader laden with corn. she now took us in tow, and in the afternoon we reached the rock. hearty very soon heard that the "zebra" had gone on to malta, with miss mizen on board, and from the way he received the information, i suspected that his feelings towards her were of a warmer character than i at first supposed. he was very anxious to be away again, and urged on porpoise to do his utmost to expedite the refitting of the yacht. fortunately, we were able to procure a spar intended for the mast of a man-of-war schooner, and which was not refused to the application of an mp. in a week the little craft was all to rights again, and once more on her way to that little military hot-house--the far-famed island of malta. chapter twenty. valetta--a glimpse of the pirate. malta lay basking on the bright blue ocean, looking very white and very hot under the scorching rays of a burning sun, as, early in the afternoon, we stood towards the entrance of the harbour of valetta. passing st. elmo castle on our right, and fort ricasoli on our left, whose numberless guns looked frowning down upon us, as if ready, at a moment's notice, to annihilate any enemy daring to enter with an exhibition of hostile intent, we ran up that magnificent inlet called the grand harbour. malta harbour has been so often described, that my readers will not thank me for another elaborate drawing. only, let them picture to themselves a gulf from three to four hundred yards across, with several deep inlets full of shipping, and on every conspicuous point, on all sides, white batteries of hewn stone, of various heights, some flush with the water, others rising in tiers one above another, with huge black guns grinning out of them, the whole crowned with flat-roofed barracks, and palaces and churches and steeples and towers, with a blue sky overhead, and blue water below, covered with oriental-looking boats, and lateen-rigged craft, with high-pointed triangular sails of snowy whiteness, and boatmen in gayly-coloured scarfs and caps, and men-of-war, and merchant-vessels--and a very tolerable idea will be formed of the place. valetta itself, the capital, stands on a hog's back, a narrow but high neck of land, dividing the grand harbour from the quarantine harbour, called, also, marsa muceit. the chief streets run in parallel lines along the said hog's back, and they are intersected by others, which run up and down its steep sides. in some parts they are so steep that flights of steps take the place of the carriage-way. the best known of these steps are the nix mangiari stairs, so-called from the troops of little beggars who infest them, and assure all passers-by that they have had nothing to eat for six days. "_oh, signori, me no fader no moder; me nix mangiari seis journi_!" an assertion which their fat cheeks and obese little figures most undeniably contradict. few people will forget those steep steps who have had to toil to the top of them on a sweltering day, not one, but three or four times, perchance; nor will those noisy, lazy, dirty beggars--those sights most foul--those odours most sickening--fade from his memory. we ran up the harbour and dropped our anchor not far from the chief landing-place, abreast of nix mangiari steps. there were several men-of-war in the harbour. among them was our old friend the "trident." "if piper sees us, we shall soon have him on board to tell us all the news," observed porpoise. "i don't think master mite will forget us, either, if he can manage to come. our good things, in the way of eating and drinking, made no slight impression on his mind, whatever he may have thought of us as individuals. if he has an opportunity, that little fellow will distinguish himself." while stowing sails, the rest of the party having gone below to prepare for a visit to the shore, my eye, as it ranged round the harbour, fell on the sails of a greek brig, which was just then standing out of the galley port. i looked at her attentively, and then pointed her out to snow, who was so earnest in seeing that his mainsail was stowed in the smoothest of skins, that he had not observed her. "what do you think of her?" said i. "why, sir, if she isn't that rascally craft which attacked us, she is as like her as one marlinspike is to another!" he exclaimed, slapping his hand on his thigh. "i'll be hanged but what i believe it is her, and no mistake about it." "i think so, too. call mr porpoise," said i. porpoise jumped on deck with his coat off, and a hairbrush in each hand, to look at her. "i couldn't swear to her; but she is the same build and look of craft as our piratical friend," he answered. "hang it! i wish that we had come in an hour or two sooner; we might have just nabbed her. as it is, i fear, before we can have time to get the power from the proper authorities to stop her, she will be far away, and laughing at us. at all events, there is not a moment to be lost." by this time all hands were on deck, looking at the greek brig; but all were not agreed as to her being the pirate. however, the gig was lowered, and we pulled on shore, to hurry up as fast as we could to the governor's palace, to make our report, and to get him to stop the brig before she got out of the harbour. landing among empty casks and bales on the sandy shore, we hurried up nix mangiari stairs, greatly to the detriment of porpoise's conversational powers, and then on to the residence of the governor, once the palace of the grand master of the far-famed knights of malta; a huge square structure, imposing for its size, rather than for the beauty of its architecture. the governor was within, and without delay we were ushered through a magnificent suite of rooms into his presence. he received us politely, but raised his eyebrows at the account of our adventure with the pirate, and seemed to insinuate that yachting gentlemen might be apt to be mistaken, and that we had perhaps after all only found a mare's-nest. "but, hang it, sir," exclaimed hearty, "the villain fired into us as fast as he could; and that gentleman, mr bubble, and several of my people, were hit. there was no fancy in that, i imagine." "ah, i see; that alters the case," said the governor. "we will send and stop the brig; but understand, that you will have to prove that she is the vessel which fired into you; and, if she is not, you must be answerable for the consequences." "by all manner of means," sung out hearty. "i suppose the consequences won't be very dreadful." "hang the consequences," he exclaimed, as soon afterwards we were left to ourselves, to await the report from the telegraph-station. "i cannot bear to hear these official gentlemen babbling of consequences when rogues are to be punished, and honest men protected. a thing must be either right or wrong. if it's right, do it--if it's wrong, let it alone. i hate the red-tape system which binds our rulers from beginning to end. we must break through it, and that pretty quickly, or old england will come to an end." we were all ready enough to argue with hearty in this matter, though the said breaking through an old deep-rooted system is more easy to propose than to carry into effect. after we had waited some time, word was brought to the palace that, as i expected would be the case, the suspicious brig had got out of the harbour; and was out of the range of the guns on the batteries before the message had reached them. a gun was fired to bring her to, but of course she paid no attention to the signal. once more we were ushered into the presence of the governor. he was very civil and very kind, be it understood. "your best course is to go to the admiral, and tell him your story, and perhaps he will send a man-of-war after her." "thank you, sir," said hearty, rising. "we will do as you advise; though i fear, before a man-of-war can get under way, our piratical friend will be safe from pursuit." "it matters little. he is very certain to be caught before long; and we will have him hung at his own yard-arm, like some of his predecessors," observed the governor, politely bowing us out. "humph!" muttered hearty, as we descended the superb steps of the palatial abode. "it matters not, i suppose, how many throats may be cut, and how many rich cargoes sent to the bottom, in the mean time. hang official routine, i say again. we must get these things altered in parliament." [note.] the admiral was living on shore, and to his residence we repaired as fast as our legs would carry us, with the thermometer at 90. "i wish that we had taken the law into our own hands, and made chase after the fellow in the yacht," exclaimed poor porpoise, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "a few hours' fighting would have been better than this hot work." "all very well if we could prove that she was the vessel which attacked us; but if it should have turned out that we were mistaken, we should have been in the place of the pirates, and have been accused of murder, robbery, rapine, and all sorts of atrocities," remarked bubble. "no, no; depend on it, things are better as they are. retribution will overtake the fellows one of these days." the admiral's abode was reached at last; but the admiral was not at home, though his secretary was. the admiral had gone into the country, and would not return till the cool of the evening. the secretary received us very politely, though he seemed rather inclined to laugh at our suspicions. a pirate sail into malta harbour,--beard the lion in his den! the idea was too absurd. it was scarcely possible that any pirates could exist in the mediterranean. a few had appeared, from time to time, it was true; but several had been hung, and the example had proved a warning to other evil-doers. he would, however, as soon as the admiral returned, mention the circumstance to him, and if he thought fit he would undoubtedly send a vessel in chase of the suspected polacca. such was the substance of the worthy secretary's remarks to us. we could not go in search of the admiral, as it was uncertain where he was to be found, so, very little satisfied with our morning's work, we left the house. "what shall we do next?" exclaimed hearty. "there seems to be no chance of our catching master sandgate." "oh, by all means, let us go on board and get cool," answered porpoise. "certainly," said bubble, "i want to look out some zephyr clothing. one can bear nothing thicker than a cobweb this sultry weather." so on board we went, and lay each man in his cabin with all the skylights off, and wind-sails down, an awning over the deck, and a punkah invented by bubble, kept working, which sent a stream of air through every portion of our abode, so that we were far more comfortable than we could have been anywhere else. when yachting i always make a point of going everywhere in the yacht, and living on board her, scarcely ever entering an hotel. we thus spent two or three hours--some reading, others smoking or talking, bubble every now and then giving vent to his feelings in snatches of song. i am not certain that we did not all drop asleep. we were aroused from our quietness by the sound of footsteps on deck, and by the descent of the steward into the cabin. "please, sir, that young gentleman that came aboard from the sloop-of-war, after we lost our masts, wants to know if he may come below to see you," said he to hearty. "by all means," cried hearty, springing up; "glad to see him." master mite had followed the steward, and heard the last observation. "thank you, sir," quoth he, helping himself to a seat. "glad to see you, too. scarcely thought you would be here so soon. just in time for a grand ball. you'll like it. we can take you there. i'm a great favourite with the signora. told me to bring all my friends--the more the better--very hearty people for smaitches. that's what we call the maltese here, you know. i saw your craft come in, and wanted to come on board before, but couldn't. a midshipman is not always his own master, you know. at last i got leave from our jolly old first, tom piper. he told me to say that he would come as soon as he could. i know that he wants to press you to come to the ball, also." thus did the young midshipman run on. hearty told him that he should be very happy to go to his friend's house under his chaperonage, and that so should we all, which mightily pleased master mite. "that's right," he exclaimed. "it will be jolly good fun, i can tell you. there are some very nice english people, too, great friends of mine. such a splendiferous girl, too--a miss mizen--came out with her uncle, old rullock, in the `zebra.' i dance with her whenever i can. if you could but see her i'm sure you'd say my taste was very good. some people think that she is cut out by another fine girl, a miss jane seton; but i don't. jane's all very well in her way, very fine to look at, and all that sort of thing; but to say the truth, she's rather addicted to snubbing midshipmen, and that we don't approve of. as for her mother, she wouldn't touch one of us with a boarding-pike. she's a terrible old harridan, and that's not in jane's favour. oh, no, give me laura mizen for my money, and all our mess say the same. she's the toast of the mess just now, i can tell you." while the youngster was running on thus i watched hearty's countenance. he fairly blushed, and looked more pleased and astonished and puzzled than i had ever seen him before in my life. he evidently did not like to stop the boy, though he winced at hearing miss mizen spoken of as the toast of the mess. he was astonished, and clearly delighted at hearing that she was so near him, for, as may be remembered, i had not told him that she and her mother had come out to malta, nor did he hear of the circumstance during our stay at gibraltar. dinner was soon brought on the table, and tom mite did not fail to do ample justice to it. "well, you yachtsmen do live like princes," quoth the young gentleman, as he quaffed his cool claret. "when i come into my fortune, i'll get a yacht, and cut the service. then, if miss mizen, or some other fine young girl like her, will have me, she shall become the rover's bride. oh, wouldn't it be jolly! here's to her health in the mean time." i could stand the joke no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter. "what's the matter?" asked tommy, guessing he might have been saying something he had better not have said. "only that captain rullock and his sister and niece are great friends of ours, and that they will be highly flattered at the high estimation in which they are held by your mess," i answered. mite, who had plenty of tact, very adroitly replied, "well, gentlemen, i hope that you will come to the ball, and meet your friends." his invitation was backed by lieutenant piper, who soon afterwards came on board, and it was arranged that we should call alongside the "trident" for them just before sunset. -----------------------------------------------------------------------note. let no one suppose that this incident is intended to reflect on any particular governor of malta. it is, unhappily, only too characteristic of many of our governors, ambassadors, and consuls, and other authorities in various parts of the world, both at home and abroad. certainly, old tom, well-known to fame, would not have so acted. chapter twenty one. a ball--what occurred at it--the greek count--mrs skyscraper. we were conducted by our friends to a handsome palace in one of the principal streets of valetta. the ball-room was full of naval and military officers in uniform, and ladies in dresses of every hue and gossamer texture. many were fair and blooming, but the dark skins and flashing eyes of a southern clime predominated. hearty and i walked in together. he cast a glance eagerly round the room. laura mizen against the field, as carstairs would say, thought i. how will she receive him, however, is the question? we men are too often apt to forget that point. he was not long in finding her; he walked up hastily, and put out his hand. she looked up, a gleam of pleased surprise lighted up her eyes, and a slight blush suffused her cheek, and then she put out her hand with the same frankness he had offered his. all right, i thought; that is just as people should meet; they will understand each other very soon. miss mizen had entirely overlooked me when meeting hearty, which, however complimentary to him, might, under some circumstances, have hurt my feelings. after allowing them to talk a little, i went forward and was cordially received as his friend. i was surprised that carstairs and bubble had not found their way to that end of the room. on returning towards the door, after exchanging a few words with some old naval acquaintance, i caught sight of him bending over a lady who was leaning back in an arm-chair flirting with her fan. her face was thus hidden from me, but on getting nearer i beheld no less a personage than mrs skyscraper; at a little distance was bubble, carrying on an animated conversation with miss jane seton, greatly to the chagrin, as it appeared, of a magnificently dressed albanian who stood near them. the stranger's face was turned away from me, so that i could not see the expression of his countenance; but the convulsive clutch which he ever and anon made at the handle of his jewel-hilted dagger showed the irritation of his feelings; and so strongly did this movement impress me with his evil intentions, that i kept my eye fixed on his weapon to hold him back should he attempt to do any mischief. just at that moment mite came up to me. "this is fun, isn't it?" quoth my young friend. "now to my mind there's a fine woman, the one mr carstairs is talking to; but by jupiter ammon she's cut out by that girl there mr bubble has ranged up alongside. she's superb, isn't she? what a juno-like head! still, do you know that i don't think i should quite like to offend her. she looks as if she could twitch a fellow by the ear pretty sharply. look there now, there's another girl, she's much more to my mind, though she has nothing of the stunner about her. the primrose style is what i like, or the violet, if that's more to your taste--quiet and neat. now, that's what i should call that little fair girl there. i say, i must just try and have a dance with her; i ought to, for the skipper made me toe and heel it with a little smaitch girl, who was wonderfully heavy to haul about; and as she didn't understand a word i said, and as i couldn't make out a word she said, there was no great fun in it." thus the youngster ran on somewhat flippantly, perhaps, drawing off my attention from bubble and the greek. i was, however, conscious that the latter had turned his head and looked at me. directly afterwards he walked off to another part of the room. as i was neither lazy nor too old to dance, nor blind to the charms of beauty, i was soon after this engaged in moving about to the sound of music among the laughing throng. among others, the fair jane honoured me with her hand. i found her any thing but a lively companion; somewhat absent, and far from haughty as before. had the avenging nemesis of an unrequited passion punished her for her treatment of my friend loring? it looked very like it; she answered my most brilliant sallies of wit by monosyllables, and smiled faintly, putting her bouquet to her nose--but i am certain the sweets therein conveyed no sensation to her olfactory nerves. what was the matter with her i could in no way make out. i was leading her to a seat, somewhat weary with my vain endeavours to arouse her, when we encountered sir lloyd snowdon, one of the officers of the garrison, and evidently an admirer of hers. "it's all arranged, miss seton; we have fixed to have the pic-nic to-morrow. mrs seton has promised and so has mrs mizen, and mrs rowley, and mrs grey, and her daughters, and that charming personage mrs skyscraper only waits to be asked." i recollected the pic-nic we had had to netley, when my friend loring had apparently made such way into the good graces of the fair jane, but she made no sign to betray any recollection of the event. i was acquainted with sir lloyd, and he knew hearty well, so he invited all our party to join the pic-nic on the morrow. old rullock of the "zebra" of course was asked, and so was captain arden of the "trident," and requested to bring some of their officers, rather an unusual stretch of military politeness at malta, where midshipmen, and even lieutenants, are held often in but slight estimation. we were to visit the old capital of citta vecchia and the catacombs, and the grotto of st. paul's, and then to go on to a sheltered bay on the seashore, where the operation of dining was to be performed. the whole plan was soon arranged, and everybody was pleased. i was talking to mrs skyscraper when sir lloyd snowdon came up to us. "by the by," said he to the widow, "i quite forgot to ask your friend the greek count; can you, my dear madam, tell me where he is to be found? i would remedy my neglect." "indeed, i cannot," answered the lady with a toss of her head; "i saw count gerovolio, but i have not watched his proceedings." "oh, mrs skyscraper--mrs skyscraper!" thought i, "what were your eyes about when they wandered just now so often towards miss seton and that finely dressed albanian?" i had missed the fair jane after supper, and heard her mother inquiring for her. i had wandered out on a narrow terrace which ran under the windows of a long corridor, to enjoy the fresh air and the moonlight. as i passed under one of the windows, i saw two figures standing in the recess. one i saw was count gerovolio, the other i felt sure was miss seton. i would not have willingly been an eavesdropper, but i could scarcely help hearing what was said. i was arrested, also, by finding that the speakers were conversing in english. "beautiful girl," exclaimed the count, in a tone of deep devotion, "you have enslaved me completely. i sought you but for my amusement, and you have thrown your golden chains around me, so that i could not break from them if i would." "oh! who are you?" exclaimed miss seton, in an agitated tone. "you did not tell me you could speak english. surely you are not an englishman." "whatever i am, i am a greek at heart and by adoption," answered the stranger, with a slight hesitation in his voice. "i was first led to the shores of that classic land to fight for the cause of her long-oppressed children. my sword raised me to my present position. let that suffice you. and now, lovely girl, do not longer hold me in torturing suspense. you know how deeply, how earnestly, i love you. your mother, you tell me, will not consent to our union. fly with me at once. my beautiful vessel waits off the coast to receive us on board, and to convey us to a land of freedom and romance; and where, emancipated from the trammels of the cold, calculating world, we may enjoy that bliss reserved for so few on earth." miss seton's answer i could not hear. i could scarcely believe that she could be influenced by such palpable sophistry. still i knew that there are moments when even the wisest among the daughters of eve, thrown off their guard by the wiles of the evil one, are ready to listen to his most barefaced falsehood; if they trust to their own strength--their own wisdom--and seek not protection from the only source whence it can come. "oh, you consummate scoundrel!" i muttered to myself, as i retreated to the doorway, whence i had come out. i had no longer a doubt as to the identity of the pretended greek. i resolved to put the matter to the test. entering the house, i walked briskly along the gallery, towards the window where i had seen the two speakers. miss seton was there--more like a statue than a living being--leaning against the wall, with her hands pressed to her forehead; but the pretended greek was gone. "miss seton," said i, going up to her, "tell me what has become of mr sandgate." "i know not of whom you speak," she answered. "i know no one of that name." "the man in the greek dress," i replied, calmly, for i felt that much depended on my tone and manner. "what! do you know him?" she asked in a faltering voice. "i do," said i; "and, miss seton, i would save you from him. he is worthless. he lives with a halter around his neck, and he will some day find it hauled taut." she stood perfectly silent for some time. i allowed her to remain so that she might regain her composure. she did this in a wonderfully short space of time. i suspected that her feelings were not very acute. "you know my secret. i throw myself on your generosity, and i am sure that you will not betray me, mr brine." "indeed, you may trust me, miss seton," i replied; "i shall rejoice at being the means of saving you from a very great danger. let me entreat you, therefore, not to see that man again on any account. keep close to your mother, and let nothing separate you from her. another time i will tell you his history, and you will see that you have reason to be guarded." "oh, tell me now, tell me now!" she exclaimed. "i will follow your advice; but i would hear all about him, and then shut him out of my thoughts forever." i saw that she was right, so i told her briefly all i knew about sandgate. she shuddered several times at the narrative. she was not particularly romantic, and fully alive to the advantages of a good position, thanks to her mother's instruction. though she had seen no great objection to becoming a greek countess, she had reason to be thankful at having escaped falling into the power of a villain of the stamp of sandgate. "now let me lead you to mrs seton," i replied, offering my arm. she took it. hers trembled as it pressed mine. "why, jane, my dear, you look very ill; what is the matter?" exclaimed the old lady, starting up with a look of real alarm in her countenance. i believe she loved her daughter, and fancied she showed it by helping her to make what she called a good match. "oh, nothing, nothing--the heat, i believe," she answered, turning still paler. "i think that i had better leave the room." her mother thought so likewise. i found their carriage. they lived not far off; so, following on foot, i watched them till they were safely within their own doors. on returning to the ball-room i heard mrs skyscraper making anxious inquiries as to what had become of count gerovolio. "never mind, we shall see him to-morrow at the pic-nic. he promised to be there," she observed. i saw from the look carstairs gave that the count had better behave himself should he venture to make his appearance, which i did not think very likely. chapter twenty two. our malta pic-nic--the catacombs--the pirate in sight--sandgate again escapes us--our expedition with the men-of-war--return from our fruitless cruise. my friends were not a little astonished when i told them, on getting on board the yacht, that sandgate was in the island. the question was, how to catch him. we had no moral doubt whatever that he had come on board our vessel with the intention of plundering us, and that he had afterwards endeavoured to send us to the bottom by attacking us in the polacca-brig; still no one could swear to the fact. we were not certain that the brig which left the harbour that morning was the one which had engaged us--we could not prove that he belonged to her; scarcely, indeed, could we expect to induce the authorities to believe that the greek count and sandgate the smuggler were one and the same person. "take my advice," observed carstairs; "don't let us fash ourselves on the subject, but give the rogue a long rope, and he will soon hang himself." we all agreed to the wisdom of this remark, and resolving to wait the course of events, turned in and went to sleep. a large and merry party set off to the scene of the pic-nic, some in caleches, and others in carriages of higher pretensions, and vehicles of all sorts, and others on horseback. i will not stop to describe the scenery. stone walls, and here and there an orange grove, form its chief characteristics. it is wonderful that there is any cultivation, considering that the greater portion of the soil has been brought from other lands. that which is produced on the island is formed from the crumbling away of the surface of the rock of which it is composed. our party met by agreement near the gates. hearty, greatly to his satisfaction, managed to undertake the escort of mrs mizen and her daughter; the widow fell to the lot of carstairs, and i took charge of mrs and miss seton. "oh! but where is count gerovolio?" exclaimed mrs skyscraper, as we were driving off. "i fully expected to have him of our party. has anybody seen him? miss seton, do you know what has become of him?" poor jane for a moment looked dreadfully disconcerted at hearing the name of the impostor; but she soon recovered her self-possession, and i did my best to rattle on, so as to draw off the attention of her mother and mr mite, who had been admitted as a fourth in the carriage. mrs skyscraper looked about in vain for the count; i thought that he would scarcely have the boldness to make his appearance. our drive, as far as we four ill-matched beings were concerned, was any thing but a pleasant one. old mrs seton was annoyed at not having sir lloyd snowdon, or any other eligible gentleman, to act the suitor to her daughter. poor jane could not drive away her own bitter thoughts. mite would infinitely rather have been in the company of one of his jolly little maltese acquaintances, and i felt oppressed at being the keeper of a young lady's secret. at last we arrived at the spot where our lionising was to commence--the old capital of the island, citta vecchia, and had to descend from our conveyances. the structure would delight a connoisseur in mediaeval antiquities, for a more ancient-looking collection of tumbledown houses i never saw collected together. here stand the first palace of the grand masters, and the cathedral of malta, celebrated for the pertinacity with which its bells are rung. but the great sight we had all come to see was the catacombs. guides and lights were procured, and the whole party descended to them. incongruous, indeed, seemed the light dresses of the ladies, the glittering uniforms of the officers, and the merry laughter of the party, with the solemn, silent gloom of this vast receptacle for the dead. these catacombs consist of long galleries or streets cut in the rock, extending a great distance, and intersecting each other at right angles about fifteen feet beneath the surface of the ground. the gloom, the chilly, confined atmosphere, the dark shadows, the mysterious passages and recesses, the undefined shapes which flitted before us, were ill calculated to dispel poor miss seton's melancholy. she walked on, however, silently by my side, avoiding rather than courting the attention of sir lloyd snowdon, who at length joined us, and who, seeing this, devoted himself with much tact to her mother. "if you have any intention, sir lloyd," thought i, "you'll win the day, notwithstanding the present appearance of matters." we could hear behind us the cheery voice of captain rullock, and every now and then a laugh from hearty, who seemed to be in high spirits. "he feels that he does not stand ill in the good graces of miss mizen, i suspect," thought i. "most sincerely do i rejoice at it; for though not to be compared in point of beauty to the lovely girl by my side, she will make him a very far better wife. her straightforward honesty, her modesty, her bright intelligence, her well-cultivated mind, her unvarying good temper, her genuine wit, her loving disposition, are certain to secure her husband's affections and respect." little did the lady by my side dream of the comparison i was drawing, and yet i verily believe that she might have been not much inferior to miss mizen in all those womanly qualities, had they not been crushed or perverted by the false system of education which her mother had adopted. such were the somewhat incongruous thoughts which passed through my mind in the catacombs of citta vecchia. i ought to have been duly oppressed with the gloom of the place, and to have thought of nothing but ghost-like forms flitting through the mysterious passages. i do not know what my companion was thinking about, but she sighed deeply and sadly. that sigh touched my heart with pity, and reminded me how little i had attempted to do to restore her mind to a state of composure. we had, as i said, walked on somewhat ahead of the rest of the party, and old rullock and hearty had just hailed us to return, when directly before us appeared the figure of a man who was evidently endeavouring to conceal himself in one of the niches cut in the rock. it had, however, been blocked up, and he was frustrated in his intention. he wore a large cloak, such as the italians call a _feriuoligio_, with which he was attempting to hide his head, but the light of the torch carried by our guide fell directly on him, and revealed the features of miles sandgate. he must have guessed that he was known, for he advanced a step or two rapidly towards us, but then, whatever were his intentions, he must have changed them, for he retreated as hurriedly, and was lost to view amid the surrounding gloom. i knew that miss seton had discovered him by the way in which her arm trembled in mine, and most certainly she would have fallen had i not supported her. "i fear, miss seton, that the atmosphere of this place oppresses you; we will get out of it as soon as possible," said i. "thank you, thank you," she answered, leaning heavily on my arm. "i long for a breath of fresh air; i shall be better then." sir lloyd snowdon was much concerned at finding that miss seton was unwell, and the whole party hurried to the mouth of the catacombs. it was very provoking to have sandgate almost within one's very grasp, and yet not to have the power of punishing him. on reaching the open air, miss seton at first nearly fainted. restoratives of all sorts were recommended by her friends, but before any could be applied, she recovered, and endeavoured to laugh off any disagreeable inquiries as to the cause of her attack. the exertion necessary to do this still further aroused her, and she speedily became one of the most lively and animated of the party. i saw that she could now do very well without me, so i retired from her side. sir lloyd snowdon took my place. he was enchanted, and abandoned himself to the happiness of the moment. she saw her advantage, and not unmindful of her wise mother's instructions, seemed resolved to make the most of it. still i thought that i detected at times the signs of unnatural spirits, and forced laughter, and i would not have answered for the consequences had the so-called count gerovolio appeared in the midst of us with a hundred well-armed followers, and summoned her to accompany him. from the catacombs we drove to the grotto of st. paul, which is at no great distance. whether the apostle to the gentiles ever took shelter within it matters but little; the monks of old decreed that he did, and therefore a fine statue of white marble has been placed within it, and the faithful have been encouraged to offer their gifts at his shrine. the statue stands in the farthest from the entrance of three grottoes, one within the other. we looked at them very much in the way that people in general look at sights with very little interest, but thinking it necessary to give utterance to certain set expressions of surprise or admiration. the most interesting sight was a portion of the cavern which resembles the nave of a church, overgrown with verdure. it is surprising that vegetation should flourish in such a position. when we had all satisfied our curiosity, we proceeded to a small sheltered bay, where the most important part of the day's entertainment was to be performed. there was no great beauty of scenery, but the blue sea, and the pure sky, and the fresh salt breeze, and the rugged rocks, made it pleasant to the sight and feelings; and as most of the party had very good appetites, and tolerably clear consciences, we were altogether very merry. captain rullock, hearty, bubble, and mite did their best to make it so. miss mizen was naturally very happy; so was her mamma, for hearty had that day very palpably declared his intentions. sir lloyd snowdon was happy because he thought he had won the beauty of the season; and mrs seton, because she fancied that the great object of her life was on the point of being accomplished. several vessels had been for some time in sight, but we had been so much engaged in our own immediate occupation, that neither i nor any of the other naval men had paid them much attention. the heavier portion of the feast had been concluded, and sparkling wines filled our glasses, and luscious grapes our plates. bubble had been called on for a song, and sir lloyd snowdon for a speech, when we were somewhat startled from our propriety by a loud exclamation from porpoise. "why, by the lord harry, there's that rascally polacca-brig again!" he cried, pointing to a vessel which was standing under full sail in-shore. our pocket-telescopes were in instant requisition. the vessel in question was a polacca-brig, of the same size, and paint and build, and appearance aloft as the one which had attacked us; but still it was impossible to be certain as to whether the vessel in sight was the pirate or not. porpoise was the only person who was positive as to her being so. hearty was inclined to side with him. still, what was to be done? captains rullock and arden were ready enough to go in chase of her, but their ships were on the other side of the island, and by the time they could have got back to valetta and obtained permission from the admiral, and been under way, the suspicious brig would have been far away again. this discussion once more nearly upset poor miss seton, but she seemed relieved, and recovered somewhat of her vivacity when it was resolved not to take any notice of the stranger. i, of course, as she did, could not help connecting the brig in sight with the appearance of the pretended count gerovolio in the catacombs. he had, i suspected, been hiding there for some reason or other, till he could get on board his vessel. after a little time the fun of the pic-nic went on as before. i, however, not being in love, nor having any lady to whom it was necessary to pay exclusive attention, kept my eyes about me, and every now and then swept the line of the coast with my telescope, while i also did not neglect to watch the movements of the brig. as she came clearly into the plane of my glass, i observed a dark cloth on her fore-topgallant-sail, which i suddenly recollected to have remarked on the same sail of the brig from which sandgate boarded us, as she lay becalmed before the squall came on. this to my mind was conclusive evidence; but my suspicions were further confirmed by seeing the polacca-brig lower her topgallant-sails, and bring her head up to the wind. when hove-to, she lowered a boat, which, well-manned, at once made for the shore. i said nothing, but narrowly watched the point for which she was steering. as she drew near, i saw a figure climb a rocky point and waive to her. the dress and air of the person left no doubt on my mind that he was no other than the greek count, or rather miles sandgate. it was, indeed, provoking to see the rascal escaping before our very sight. had we taken upon ourselves to make chase after him, he would have got on board the boat before we could have reached him. still i felt that i ought to point out the state of things to rullock and arden, and let them judge what should be done. "go in chase after the fellow, by all means," they exclaimed; "we must not be too sanguine as to catching our bird, or proving him a culprit if we do catch him, but still we'll try." it was arranged, therefore, that while the ladies and military men, and non-combatants, should take their time to return, we naval men should hurry back to valetta, and take the necessary steps to go in chase of the pirate. hearty looked at miss mizen and thought he should very much like to stay with her, but his manhood would not let him; so he, with bubble and carstairs, settled to go away in the yacht. mrs skyscraper made an effort to detain the latter, but her admirer was not a man to shirk work where any was to be done, so he set off with the rest of us. this time we were more successful in finding the admiral. he was eager as we could be to catch the pirate, and instantly ordered the "trident" and "zebra" to go in chase of her. when last seen, after sandgate, or the man we supposed to be him, had got on board, she was standing to the southward and east, with the wind from the northward; in which direction she would ultimately shape her course it was impossible to say. calculating that she might probably be still hovering about the island, the "trident" was ordered, after leaving the harbour, to beat round to the northward of malta; while the "zebra" was to keep to the southward, so as to intercept her, should she steer a course for the straits. it was arranged that the "frolic" should accompany the "zebra," but to keep to the nor'ward of her, within telegraph distance. "this is exciting," exclaimed bubble, as we bowled along in company with the brig-of-war, away from malta harbour. "it seems like real work, going in chase of a pirate; only i hope that he may not give us the go-by in the dark." the sun sank into the ocean before we had rounded gozo, so that we were not able to see what vessels were to the eastward of us. we kept, however, a very bright lookout on either hand, so that we thought no vessel could pass between us and the land on one side, or us and the "zebra" on the other. we were to stand on till we fell in with the "trident" at daylight, and then the three vessels, spreading wide apart, were to continue the chase all day, and return or not at discretion. it was at first a lovely night, starlight and bright, with just such a breeze that we could carry our gaff-topsail, and yet the cutter scarcely heeled over to it. none of us felt inclined to go below, notwithstanding the fatigues of the day and the previous night. hearty, of course, had pleasant thoughts; porpoise was eagerly watching for the pirate; i was running over the events of the day, and bubble was whistling, while carstairs was, i suspect, pondering on the advisability of proposing to mrs skyscraper. at first we had been very loquacious, but the silent solemnity of the night had an influence on all of us, and by degrees our remarks grew less and less frequent, till we were found standing, in meditative mood, in different parts of the vessel. the hours of the night passed by, and still we all kept the deck far later than was our usual custom. towards midnight, either from a mist rising, or from some other cause, the darkness very much increased. "if this continues we shall have to shorten sail, or we shall be running into some craft or other," observed porpoise, who was no great admirer of romance, and would rather all the time have been listening to a jovial song. "yes, indeed," said i; "very little chance, though, of falling in with our roving friend, even should he be in the neighbourhood." "we'll get the gaff-topsail off her, mr snow," said porpoise; "the brig will be shortening sail, and if we do not, we shall be running ahead of her." the order was given, and the hands had gone aloft to execute it, when an exclamation from the look-out forward made us open our eyes. "a sail ahead, on the starboard-bow!" he shouted, with startling energy. we looked in the direction indicated. "luff--luff all you can," cried porpoise, with equal animation. "luff! or she'll be into us." the helm was put down; happily the gaff-topsail had not been taken in, and the cutter, having good way on her, shot up to windward. close on our quarter appeared, towering up, it seemed, into the sky, a wide spread of canvas. the stranger rushed on past us, the white foam hissing and bubbling at her bows. "what vessel is that?" shouted porpoise. i thought i heard a shout of derisive laughter in return. the next moment, as she came beam on, i distinctly made her out to be a greek polacca-brig. "the pirate--the pirate!" shouted all hands. "we had a near chance of being run down by the rascal," cried porpoise; "but we must be after him as soon as we can let the `zebra' know in what direction to make chase." to do this we had to edge away to the southward, firing our guns to call the attention of the man-of-war brig. this was not so easy to do as might be supposed. we stood on and on, blazing away to no effect. we reached the track of the brig, but still we did not find her. it was difficult to say what we should do next. daylight came, and we had the satisfaction--a very poor one, thought i--of seeing her hull down to the eastward, while we had every reason to believe that the chase was merrily bowling away to the westward. there was no use going after the pirate brig by ourselves, so that all that we could do was to make sail in the hopes of catching up our friend. porpoise bit his nails with vexation. hearty wanted to get the matter over to return to malta. it was noon before we came up with the "zebra." this we should not have done had she not hove-to for us. we then had to wait for the "trident," which appeared to the northward, standing towards us. we were all so confident that the polacca-brig which passed us in the night was the pirate, that our naval friends were obliged to be convinced, so we all hove about, and stood back the way we had come in chase. i think it better to make a long story short. we crowded every thing we could carry, and the little "frolic" behaved beautifully alongside her big companions, shooting somewhat ahead of them in light winds, and keeping well up with them when there was a sea on. we scarcely expected that the pirate would attempt to get through the gut, and therefore we might hope to pick him up inside it. i could not help suspecting, however, that all the time mr sandgate was laughing at us in his sleeve, and that we should see no more of him. so it proved. ten days were fruitlessly expended in the search, and at the end of that time we were all once more at anchor in malta harbour. hearty very speedily reconciled himself to the disappointment in the society of miss mizen. carstairs was soon at the feet of mrs skyscraper, while i went to inquire for miss seton; but as i found sir lloyd snowdon occupying her entire attention, i paid a short visit, and went to dine with piper on board the "trident." chapter twenty three. ladies aboard--our crew's dread of the consequences. we had not been many days in harbour, when rullock received orders to take a cruise to the westward to practise his crew, who, being mostly raw hands quickly raised at plymouth, required no little practice to turn them into men-of-war's men. as plenty of sea-air had been prescribed for miss mizen, and change of scene--not that i think she now required either--it was arranged that she and her mother should take a cruise in the "zebra." had mrs mizen been his wife instead of his sister, captain rullock could not have taken her, as the rules of the service do not allow a captain to take his wife to sea with him, though he may any other man's wife, or any relative, or any lady whatever. under such circumstances, it was not to be supposed that the "frolic" would remain at anchor. accordingly she put to sea with the brig-of-war. carstairs, however, had metal more attractive to his taste at valetta, so decided on remaining on shore. we did not fail to miss him, and to wish for his quaint, dry, comic remarks, and apt quotations from shakespeare. never, certainly, was a party better constituted than ours for amusing each other, all of us having that indispensable ingredient of harmony, perfect good humour; and had not that arch mischief-maker cupid found his way among us, we should have continued in united brotherhood till the yacht was laid up. a light breeze brought off faintly the sound of the evening gun from the castle of st. elmo, as, in company with the "zebra," we stood away from malta to the westward. hearty walked his deck with a prouder air and firmer step than was his wont. nothing so much gives dignity to a man as the consciousness of having won the affections of a true, good girl. his eye was seldom or never off the brig, even after the shades of night prevented the possibility of distinguishing much more than her mere outline, as her taut masts and square yards, and the tracery of her rigging appeared against the starlit sky. he had charged porpoise to have a very sharp look-out kept that we might run no chance of parting from our consort; but, not content with that, he was on deck every half-hour during the night to ascertain that his directions were obeyed. "i say, bill, the gov'nor seems to fancy that no one has got any eyes in his head worth two farthing rushlights but hisself, this here cruise," i heard old sleet remark to his chum, frost. "what can a come over him?" "what, don't you know, bo?" answered bill; "i thought any one with half an eye could have seen that. why, he's been and courted the niece of the skipper of the brig there, and soon they'll be going and getting spliced, and then good-bye to the `frolic.' she'll be laid up to a certainty. it's always so. the young gentlemen as soon as they comes into their fortunes goes and buys a yacht. we'll always be living at sea, say they. it goes on at first very well while they've only friends comes aboard, but soon they takes to asking ladies, and soon its all up with them. either they takes to boxing about in the channel, between the wight and the main; for ever up and down anchor, running into harbour to dine, and spending the day pulling on shore, waiting alongside the yacht-house slip for hours, and coming aboard with a cargo of boat-cloaks and shawls, or else, as i have said, they goes and gives up the yacht altogether." old sleet gave a munch at his grub and then replied,--"but if i don't judge altogether wrong by the cut of this here young lady's jib, i don't think she's one of those who'd be for wishing her husband to do any such thing. when she came aboard of us, t'other day, she stepped along the thwarts just as if she'd been born at sea. says i to myself, when i saw her, she's a sailor's daughter, and a sailor's niece, and should be a sailor's wife; but if what you say is true, bo, she's going to be next door to it, as a chap may say, and that's the wife of a true, honest yachtsman. no, no, there's no fear, she won't let him lay up the `frolic,' depend on't." "well, i hope so," observed frost; "i should just like to have a fine young girl like she aboard, they keeps things alive somehow, when they are good, though when they are t'other they are worse than one of old nick's imps for playing tricks and doing mischief." "you are right there again, and no mistake, bo," answered sleet. "i once sailed with a skipper who had his wife aboard: i never seed such goings on before nor since. the poor man couldn't call his soul his own, or his sleep his own. she was a downright double-fisted woman, a regular white sergeant. she wouldn't allow a drop of grog to be served out without she did it, nor a candle end to be burned without logging it down; she almost starved the poor skipper--she used to tell him it was for his spirit's welfare. he never put the ship about without consulting her. one day, when it was blowing big guns and small-arms, she was out of sorts, and says he-"`molly, love, i think we ought for to be shortening sail, or we may chance to have the masts going over the sides.' "`shorten sail?' she sings out, `let the masts go, and you go with them, for what i care. let the ship drive, she'll bring up somewhere as well without you as with you.' "the poor skipper hadn't a word to say, but for his life he daren't take the canvas off the ship. "`my love, it blows very hard,' says he again, in a mild, gentle voice. "`let it blow harder,' answers the lady; and you might have supposed it was a boatswain's mate who'd swallowed a marlinspike who spoke. "presently down came the gale heavier than ever on us. crack, crack, went the masts, and in another second we hadn't a stick standing. "`where's the ship going to drive to, now?' asks the skipper, turning to his wife. `i've been a fool a long time, but i don't mean to be a fool any longer; just you get the ship put to rights, or overboard you go.' "`how am i to do that same?' asks mrs molly, very considerably mollified; `i don't know how.' "`then overboard you goes,' says the skipper, quite coolly, but firmly. `if the wind shifts three or four points only we shall have an ugly shore under our lee, which will knock every timber of the ship into ten thousand atoms in no time, and you may thank yourself for being the cause of the wreck.' "`oh, spare my life, spare my life, and i'll never more interfere with the duty of the ship,' cries the lady, in an agony of fear. "the captain pretended to be softened. `well,' says he, `take the oaths and go below, and i'll think about it.' "mrs molly, as we always called her, sneaked to her cabin without saying another word. all hands set to work with a will, and obeyed the skipper much more willingly than we had ever done before. we got jury-masts up, and carried the ship safely into port, but from that time to this i've always fought shy of a ship with petticoats in the cabin, and so i always shall, except i happen to know the sort of woman who wears them." i was much amused with old sleet's remarks, and in most respects i agreed, with him. a day or two afterwards the crew had their suspicions confirmed by the appearance of mrs and miss mizen on the deck of the cutter. in the mean time hearty had been constantly on board the brig-of-war. he dined on board every day, as indeed we all did, only we dined in the gun-room, and he with the captain and ladies. the accommodation, however, on board the brig was rather confined, and as the weather promised to continue fine, he became naturally anxious to get them on board the yacht. at last he broached the subject. old rullock did not object; the ladies finding that there was nothing incorrect in the proceeding were very willing; and to give them more accommodation, an exchange was effected between them and bubble, who took up his quarters on board the brig. i should have gone also, but porpoise begged i would remain and keep him company, so i doubled up in his cabin to give the ladies more accommodation. hearty took snow's berth, and the old man was very glad on such an occasion to swing in a hammock forward. the thought of those days are truly sunny memories of foreign seas. miss mizen, by her kind and lively manners, her readiness to converse with the crew, her wish to pick up information about the sea and the places they had visited, and their own histories, and her unwillingness to give trouble, soon won the love of all on board; while her mother, whose character was very similar to her daughter's, was a general favourite, and i heard old sleet declare to frost that the old lady wasn't a bit like mrs molly magrath, and as for the young girl she was an angel, and old as he was he'd be ready to go round the world to serve her, that he would. "now don't you think mr hearty, that you could find some one who can spin a regular sea matter-of-fact yarn about things which really have been?" said miss mizen, one fine afternoon, with one of those sweet smiles which would have been irresistible, even if a far more important request had been made. the owner of the "frolic" thought a little. "yes, by the by, i have it," he exclaimed; "one of the men i have on board is a first-rate yarn-spinner. once set his tongue a going, it is difficult to stop it, and yet there is very little romance about the old man. he has, i conclude, a first-rate memory, and just tells what he has seen and heard. i'll call him aft, and will try what we can get out of him." hearty on this went forward, and after a little confab with the crew, returned with old sleet, who, instead of being bashful, was looking as pleased as punch in his most frolicsome humour, at the honour about to be done him. without hesitation he doffed his hat, threw his quid overboard, smoothed down his hair, and began his tale. i must confess that i have not given it in his language, which was somewhat a departure from the orthodox vernacular, and might weary my readers. "now, gentlemen and ladies all, i'm going to tell you--" how joe buntin did the revenue. the "pretty polly" was the fastest, the smartest, and the sweetest craft that sailed out of fairport; so said joe buntin, and nobody had better right to say it, or better reason to know it, he being part owner of her, and having been master of her from the day her keel first touched the water. she was a cutter of no great size, for she measured only something between thirty and forty tons; she had great beam for her length, was sharp in the bows, rising slightly forward, and with a clean run; she was, in fact, a capital sea-boat, fit to go round the world if needs be--weatherly in a heavy sea, and very fast in smooth water, though the nautical critics pronounced her counter too short for beauty; but joe did not consider that point a defect, as it made her all the better for running in foul weather, which was what he very frequently wanted her to do. she carried a whacking big mainsail, with immense hoist in it, and the boom well over the taffrail. her big jib was a whopper with a vengeance, and her foresail hoisted chock up to the block. she had a swinging gaff-topsail very broad in the head, and a square-sail to set for running, with prodigious spread in it; so that, give the "pretty polly" a good breeze, few were the craft of anything like her own size she couldn't walk away from. in fact, anybody might have taken her for some dandified yacht, rather than for a humble pilot-boat, which the number on her mainsail proclaimed her to be. now the "pretty polly," like other beauties, had her fair weather and her foul weather looks, her winter as well as her summer suit. she had her second, and third, and storm-jibs, a trysail of heavy canvas, and even a second mainsail, with a shorter boom to ship at times, while her standing and running rigging was as good as the best hemp and the greatest care could keep it, for every inch of it was turned in under joe's inspection, if not with his own hand. joe buntin loved his craft, as does every good sailor; she was his care, his pride, his delight, mistress, wife, and friend. he would talk to her and talk of her by the hour together; he was never tired of praising her, of expatiating on her qualities, of boasting of her achievements, how she walked away from such a cutter--how she weathered such a gale--how she clawed off a lee-shore on such an occasion; there was no end to what she had done and was to do. she was, in truth, all in all to joe; he was worthy of her, and she was worthy of him, which reminds us that he himself claims a word or two of description. he had little beauty, nor did he boast of it, for in figure he was nearly as broad as high, with a short, thick neck, and a turn-up nose in the centre of his round, fresh-coloured visage; but he had black, sparkling eyes, full of fun and humour, and a well-formed mouth, with strong white teeth, which rescued his countenance from being ugly, while an expression of firmness and boldness, with great good nature, made him respected by all, and gained him plenty of friends. joe sported a love-lock on each side of his face, with a little tarpaulin hat stuck on the top of his head, a neat blue jacket, or a simple blue guernsey frock, and an enormously large pair of flushing trousers, with low shoes; indeed, he was very natty in his dress, and although many people called him a smuggler--nor is there any use in denying that he was one--he did not look a bit like those cut-throat characters represented on the stage or in print-shops, with high boots, and red caps, and cloaks, and pistols, and hangers. indeed, so far from there being any thing of the ruffian about him, he looked and considered himself a very honest fellow. he cheated nobody, for though he broke the revenue laws systematically and regularly, he had, perhaps, persuaded himself, by a course of reasoning not at all peculiar to himself, that there was no harm in so doing; possibly he had no idea that those laws were bad laws, and injurious to the country; so out of the evil, as he could not remedy it, he determined to pluck that rosebud--profit--to his own pocket. remember that we are not at all certain that he actually did reason as we have suggested; we are, we confess, rather inclined to suspect that he found the occupation profitable; that he had been engaged in it from his earliest days, and therefore followed it without further troubling his head about its lawfulness or unlawfulness. so much for joe buntin and his cutter the "pretty polly." his crew were a bold set of fellows, stanch to him, and true to each other; indeed, most of them, as is usual, had a share in the vessel, and all were interested in the success of her undertakings; they were quiet, peaceable, and orderly men; their rule was never to fight, the times were too tranquil for such work, and a running noose before their eyes was not a pleasant prospect. they trusted entirely to their wit and their heels for success, and provided one cargo in three could be safely landed, they calculated on making a remunerating profit. the days when armed smuggling craft, with a hundred hands on board bid defiance to royal cruisers, had long passed by, for we are referring to a period within the last six or eight years only, during the last days of smuggling. now the contraband trade is chiefly carried on in small open boats, or fishing craft, affording a very precarious subsistence to those who still engage in it. after what has been said it may be confessed that the "pretty polly" was chiefly employed in smuggling, though her ostensible, and, indeed, very frequent occupation, was that of a pilot-vessel. now we must own that in those days we did not feel a proper and correct hatred of smugglers and their doings; the dangers they experienced, the daring and talent they displayed in their calling, used, in spite of our better reason, to attract our admiration, and to raise them to the dignity of petty heroes in our imagination. the dishonest merchant, the dealer in contraband goods, the encourager of crime, was the man who received the full measure of our contempt and dislike--he who, skulking quietly on shore, without fear or danger, reaped the profits of the bold seaman's toil. fairport, to which the "pretty polly" belonged, is a neat little town at the mouth of a small river on the southern coast of england. the entrance to the harbour is guarded by an old castle, with a few cannon on the top of it, and was garrisoned by a superannuated gunner, his old wife and his pretty grand-daughter, who performed most efficiently all the duties in the fortress, such as sweeping it clean, mopping out the guns, and shutting the gates at night. sergeant ramrod was a good specimen of a fine old soldier, and certainly when seeing his portly figure and upright carriage, and listening to his conversation, one might suppose that he held a higher rank than it had ever been his fate to reach. he had seen much service, been engaged in numerous expeditions in various parts of the world, and went through the whole peninsular war; indeed, had merit its due reward, he should, he assured his friends, be a general instead of a sergeant, and so being rather an admirer of his, we are also apt to think--but then when has merit its due reward? what an extraordinary hoisting up and hauling down there would be to give every man his due! sergeant ramrod always went by the name of the governor of fairport castle, and we suspect rather liked the title. he was, in truth, much better off than the governors of half the castles in the world, though he did not think so himself; he had no troops, certainly, to marshal or drill, but then he had no rounds to make or complaints to hear, and his little garrison, composed of his wife and grandchild, never gave him a moment's uneasiness, while he might consider himself almost an independent ruler, so few and far between were the visits of his superior officers. the town of fairport consists of a long street, with a few offshoots, containing some sixty houses or so, inhabited by pilots, fishermen, and other seafaring characters, two or three half-pay naval officers, a few casual visitors in the summer months, a medical man or two, and a proportionate number of shopkeepers. the castle stands at one end of the town, close to the mouth of the river, the tide of which sweeps round under its walls, where there is always water sufficient to float a boat even at low tide. in the walls of the castle are a few loopholes and a small postern-gate or port to hoist in stores, and close to it is a quay, the chief landing-place of the town. here a revenue officer is stationed night and day to prevent smuggling, though there are certain angles of the castle-wall which he cannot overlook from his post. this description we must beg our readers to remember. one fine morning, soon after daybreak in the early part of the year, joe buntin and his crew appeared on fairport quay with their pea-jackets and bundles under their arms, and jumping into their boat pulled on board the "pretty polly." her sails were loosened and hoisted in a trice, the breeze took her foresail, the mainsail next filled, the jib-sheet was flattened aft, and slipping from her moorings she slowly glided towards the mouth of the river. the jib-sheet was, however, immediately after let go, the helm was put down, and about she came--in half a minute more, so narrow is the channel, that she was again about, and at least six tacks had she to make before she could weather the westernmost spit at the entrance of the harbour, and stand clear out to sea. "i wonder which of the french ports she's bound to now," observed a coast-guard man to a companion who had just joined him on the little quay close to the castle. "after some of her old tricks, i warrant." "we shall have to keep a sharp look-out after him, or he'll double on us, you may depend on it," replied the other; "joe buntin's a difficult chap to circumvent, and one needs to be up early in the morning to find him snoozing." "more reason we shouldn't go to sleep ourselves, ben," said the first speaker; "i must report the sailing of the `pretty polly' to the inspecting commander, that he may send along the coast to give notice that she's out. captain sturney would give not a little to catch the `pretty polly,' and he's told joe that he'll nab her some day." "what did joe say to that?" "oh, he laughed and tried to look innocent, and answered that he was welcome to her if he ever found her with a tub of spirits, or a bale of tobacco in her." "i'll tell you, though, who'd give his right hand and something more, to boot, to catch master joe himself, or i'm very much mistaken." "who's that?" "why, lieutenant hogson, to be sure. you see he has set his eyes on little margaret ramrod, the old gunner's grandchild, but she don't like him, though he is a naval officer, and won't have any thing to say to him, and he has found out that joe is sweet in that quarter, and suspects that if it weren't for him, he himself would have more favour. now, if he could get joe out of the way, the game would be in his own hands." "oh, that's it, is it? well, i think the little girl is right, for joe is a good fellow, though he does smuggle a bit; and as for lieutenant hogson, though he is our officer, the less we say about him the better." while this conversation was going on, the "pretty polly" had reached down abreast of the quay, when buntin, who was at the helm, waved his hand to the coast-guard men, they in return wishing him a pleasant voyage and a safe return. "thank ye," answered joe, laughing, for he and his opponents were on excellent terms. "thank ye, and remember, keep a bright look-out for me." the cutter then passed so close to the castle that her boom almost grazed its time-worn walls. joe looked up at the battlements, and there he saw a bright young face, with a pair of sparkling eyes, gazing down upon him. joe took off his tarpaulin hat and waved it. "i'll not forget your commission, miss margaret. my respects to your grandfather," he sang out. there was not time to say more before the cutter shot out of hearing. the flutter of a handkerchief was the answer, and as long as a human figure was visible on the ramparts, joe saw that mistress margaret was watching him. now, it must be owned, that it was only of late joe had yielded to the tender passion, and it would have puzzled him to say how it was. he had been accustomed to bring over trifling presents to the little girl, and had ingratiated himself with the old soldier, by the gift now and then of a few bottles of real cognac; but he scarcely suspected that his "pretty polly," his fast-sailing craft, had any rival in his affections. the day after the "pretty polly," sailed, margaret was seated at her work, and the old dame sat spinning in their little parlour in the castle, while mr ramrod was taking his usual walk on the quay, when a loud tap was heard at the door. "come in," said the dame, and lieutenant hogson made his appearance. now, although by no means a favourite guest, he was, from his rank and office, always welcomed politely, and margaret jumped up and wiped a chair, while the dame begged him to be seated. his appearance was not prepossessing, for his face was pock-marked, his hair was coarse and scanty, and sundry potations, deep and strong, had added a ruddy hue to the tip of his nose, while his figure was broad and ungainly. he threw himself into a chair, as if he felt himself perfectly at home. "ah, pretty margaret! bright and smiling as ever, i see. how i envy your happy disposition!" he began. "yes, sir, i am fond of laughing," said margaret, demurely. "so i see. and how's grandfather?" "here he comes to answer for himself, sir," said margaret, as old ramrod appeared, and, welcoming his guest, placed a bottle and some glasses before him, while margaret brought a jug of hot water and some sugar. the eyes of the lieutenant twinkled as he saw the preparations. "not much duty paid on this, i suspect, mr ramrod," he observed, as he smacked his lips after the first mouthful. "can't say, sir. they say that the revenue does not benefit from any that's drunk in fairport." "a gift of our friend buntin's, probably," hazarded the officer. "can't say, sir; several of my friends make me a little present now and then. i put no mark on them." "oh, all right, i don't ask questions," said the lieutenant. "by the by, i find that the `pretty polly' has started on another trip." "so i hear, sir," said ramrod. "can you guess where she's gone, miss margaret?" asked the officer. "piloting, i suppose, sir," answered the maiden, blushing. "oh, ay, yes, of course; but didn't he talk of going anywhere on the french coast?" "yes, sir," answered margaret, "he said he thought he might just look in at cherbourg." "and how soon did he say he would be back?" asked the officer. "in four or five days, sir," said margaret. the lieutenant was delighted with the success of his interrogations, and at finding the maiden in so communicative a mood; so mixing a stiffer tumbler of grog than before to heighten his own wits, he continued, "now, my good girl, i don't ask you to tell me any thing to injure our friend buntin, but did he chance to let drop before you where he proposed to make his land-fall on his return--you understand, where he intended to touch first before he brings the `pretty polly' into fairport?" "dear me, i did hear him talk of looking into--bay; and he told denman, and jones, and tigtop, and several others to be down there," answered margaret, with the greatest simplicity. "i don't think the girl knows what she's talking of, mr hogson," interposed old ramrod, endeavouring to silence his grand-daughter. "but of course any thing she has let drop, you won't make use of, sir." "oh, dear, no! of course not, my good friend," answered mr hogson. "i merely asked for curiosity's sake. but i must wish you good afternoon. i have my duties to attend to--duty before pleasure, you know, mr ramrod. good-by, miss margaret, my ocean lily--a good afternoon to you, old hero of a hundred fights;" and, gulping down the contents of his tumbler, with no very steady steps the officer took his leave. as soon as he was gone, ramrod scolded his grandchild for her imprudence in speaking of buntin's affairs. "you don't know the injury you may have done him," he added; "but it never does to trust a female with what you don't want known." "perhaps not, grandfather," said margaret, smiling archly. "but joe told me that i might just let it fall, if i had an opportunity, that he was going to run a crop at--bay, and i could not resist the temptation when mr hogson asked me, thinking i was so simple all the time. i'm sure, however, i wish that joe would give over smuggling altogether. it's very wrong, i tell him, and very dangerous; but he promises me that if he can but secure two more cargoes, he'll give it up altogether. i'm sure i wish he would." "so do i, girl, with all my heart; for it does not become me, an officer of the government, to associate with one who constantly breaks the laws; but yet, i own it, i like the lad, and wish him well." margaret did not express her sentiments; but the bright smile on her lips betrayed feelings which she happily had never been taught the necessity of controlling. mr hogson esteemed himself a very sharp officer; and, as he quitted the castle, he congratulated himself on his acuteness in discovering buntin's plans. he had spies in various directions, or rather, people whom he fancied were such, though every one of them was well-known to the smugglers, and kept in pay by them. by them the information he had gained from margaret was fully corroborated, and accordingly he gave the necessary orders to watch for the cutter at the spot indicated, while he collected a strong body of men to seize her cargo as soon as the smugglers attempted to run it. his arrangements were made with considerable judgment, and could not, he felt certain, fail of success, having stationed signalmen on every height in the neighbourhood of--bay, to give the earliest notice of the smugglers' approach. as soon as it was dark, he himself, with the main body of coast-guard men, all well-armed, set off by different routes, to remain in ambush near the spot. while they lay there, they heard several people pass them on their way to the shore, whom they rightly conjectured were those whose business it was to carry the tubs and bales up the cliffs to their hides, as soon as landed. the night was very dark, for there was no moon, and the sky was cloudy; and though there was a strong breeze, there was not sufficient sea on to prevent a landing; in fact, it was just the night the smugglers would take advantage of. mr hogson, having stationed his men, buttoned up his pea-jacket, and drawing his south-wester over his ears, set off along the shore to reconnoitre. he rubbed his hands with satisfaction when he perceived a number of people collected on the beach, and others approaching from various directions. "i'm pretty sure of forty or fifty pounds at least," he muttered, "and if i can but nab master joe himself, i'll soon bring his coy sweetheart to terms, i warrant. ah! the cutter must be getting in with the land, or these people would not be assembling yet." just then a gleam of bright light shot forth from the cliffs, at no great distance from where he was standing; it was answered by the gleam of a lantern from the sea, which was instantly again obscured. he watched with intense anxiety, without moving for some minutes, when he thought that he observed two dark objects glancing over the waters towards the shore. his difficulty was to select the proper moment for his attack. if he appeared too soon, the people on shore would give notice, and the boats would return to the cutter; if he did not reach them directly after they touched the shore, he knew from experience that he should certainly find them empty, a minute or two sufficing to carry off the whole cargo. at last he had no doubt that the smugglers were at hand; and, as fast as his legs could carry him, he hurried back to bring up his men. we must now return to the "pretty polly." besides joe buntin, the crew of the cutter consisted of dick davis, tom figgit, and jack calloway, as thorough seamen as were ever collected together, and all of them licenced pilots for the channel, each having a share in the craft; then there were, besides them, twice this number of men shipped on certain occasions, who, though they received a share of the profits, had no property in her. joe had determined to run great risks this voyage, in the hopes of making large profits, and had invested a large part of his property in the venture, which his agent had prepared ready for shipment at cherbourg. the wind shifted round to the nor'ard, and the "pretty polly" had a quick run across the channel. the evening of the day she left fairport, she was riding at anchor in the magnificent harbour of cherbourg. as soon as they arrived, he and his mates went on shore, and the agent, not expecting him that evening, being out of the way, they betook themselves to a _cafe_ on the quay, overlooking the harbour. joe always made himself at home wherever he went, and although he had no particular aptitude for learning languages, he managed, without any great difficulty, to carry on a conversation in french, and his thorough good nature and ready fund of humour gained him plenty of friends among the members of the great nation. the house of entertainment into which the englishmen walked, is entitled "le cafe de la grande nation." the room was large, and had glass doors opening on the quay, through which a view of the harbour was obtained. it was full of little round tables, with marble slabs, surrounded with chairs, and the walls were ornamented with glowing pictures of naval engagements, in which the tricolour floated proudly at the mastheads of most of the ships, while a few crippled barks, with their masts shot away, and their sails in tatters, had the british ensign trailing in the water. the prospect before them was highly picturesque. directly in front was an old tower, the last remnant of the ancient walls of cherbourg. beyond, spread out before them, was the broad expanse of its superb harbour, capable of containing all the fleet of france. in the centre, where labourers were busily at work, was the breakwater, the intended rival of plymouth, one entrance guarded by the fort of querqueville, the other by that of pelee; and on the western shore, guarded by numerous ranges of batteries, was the naval arsenal and dockyard, the pride of the people of cherbourg, and which, when finished, is intended to surpass any thing of the kind possessed by the _perfide anglais_. joe and his friends, having ordered some _eau de vie_ and water, and lighted their cigars, took their seats near the door. they did not stand much on ceremony in passing their remarks on all they saw, particularly at the men-of-war's men who were strolling about the town. "my eyes, dick," exclaimed tom figgit, "look at them fellows with their red waistcoats and tight jackets, which look as if they were made for lads half their size, and their trousers with their sterns in the fore part. just fancy them going aloft." "they are rum enough, but, to my mind, not such queer-looking chaps as the sodgers," answered dick. "do you know, dick, that i've often thought that a frenchman must be cast out of quite a different mould to an englishman? the clothes of one never would fit t'other. it has often puzzled me to account for it." "why, tom, it would puzzle one if one had to account for all the strange things in the world," answered the other. "you might just as well ask why all the women about here wear caps as big as balloons; they couldn't tell themselves, i warrant." just then their conversation was broken off, that they might listen to joe, who had entered into a warm discussion with the boatswain, or some such officer of one of the french ships-of-war, on the relative qualities of their respective navies. the _salle_ was full at the time of naval and military officers of inferior grades, douaniers, gens-d'armes, and worthies of a similar stamp, all smoking, and spitting, and gesticulating, and talking together. "comment, monsieur buntin," said the frenchman; "do you mean to say that you have got an arsenal as large as le notre de cherbourg in the whole of england?" "i don't know how that may be," answered joe, quietly; "portsmouth isn't small, and plymouth isn't small, but perhaps we don't require them so big. we get our enemies to build ships for us." "bah," exclaimed the frenchman, shrugging his shoulders; "les perfides!" just then a fine frigate was seen rounding point querqueville. like a stately swan slowly she glided through the water till, when she approached the town, her rigging was crowded with men, her courses were clewed up, her topsails and topgallant-sails were furled, and she swung round to her anchor. she was a model of symmetry and beauty, and the frenchmen looked on with admiration. "there," exclaimed joe's friend, "n'est-ce pas que c'est belle? have you got a ship in the whole english navy like her?" "i don't know," answered joe, innocently. "but if there came a war, we very soon should, i can tell you." "comment?" said the frenchman. "why you see, monsieur, we should have she." "sare!" exclaimed half a dozen frenchmen, starting up and drawing their swords. "do you mean to insult la grande nation?" whereupon tom figgit and dick davis, though they did not exactly comprehend the cause of offence, jumped up also, and prepared for a skirmish, which might have ended somewhat seriously for the three englishmen, had not joe's agent at that moment appeared and acted as a pacificator between them, joe assuring them that he had no intention of insulting them or any one of their nation, and that he had merely said what he thought would be the case. joe did not spend a longer time than was absolutely necessary at cherbourg, and as soon as he got his cargo on board, the "pretty polly" was once more under way for england. her hold was stowed with much valuable merchandise, chiefly silks, laces, and spirits. she had also on deck a number of empty tubs, and a few bales filled with straw. as soon as he had got clear of the land, the wind, which had at first been southerly, shifted to the south-west, and it soon came on to blow very fresh. this he calculated would bring him upon the english coast at too early an hour for his purpose, so when he had run about two-thirds of his distance, he lay to, with his foresail to windward, waiting for the approach of evening. as he walked the deck of his little vessel, with tom figgit by his side, he every now and then broke into a low quiet laugh. at last he gave vent to his thoughts in words. "if we don't do the revenue this time, tom, say i'm no better than one of them big-sterned mounsieurs. what a rage that dirty spy, hogson, will be in! ha, ha, ha! it's a pleasure to think of it." tom fully participated in all his leader's sentiments, and by their light-hearted gaiety one might have supposed that they had some amusing frolic in view, instead of an undertaking full of peril to their personal liberty and property. all this time a man was stationed at the masthead to keep a look-out in every direction, that no revenue-cruiser should approach them without due notice, to enable them to get out of her way. we must now return to lieutenant hogson. as soon as he felt certain that the boats had landed, he hurried down with his men to the beach. his approach was apparently not perceived, and while the smugglers were actively engaged in loading themselves with tubs and bales of goods, he was among them. "stand and deliver, in the king's name," he shouted out, collaring the first smuggler he could lay hands on, his men following his example. for a moment the smugglers appeared to be panic-struck by the suddenness of the attack; but soon recovering themselves, as many as were at liberty threw down their loads and made their escape. "seize the boats," he added. "here, take charge of this prisoner." and rushing into the water, he endeavoured to capture the boat nearest to him; but just as he had got his hand on her gunnel, the people in her, standing up with their oars in their hands, gave her so hearty a shove, that, lifting on the next wave, she glided out into deep water, while he fell with his face into the surf, from which he had some difficulty in recovering himself with a thorough drenching; the other boat getting off in the same manner. in the mean time, signals had been made by the revenue-men stationed on the neighbouring heights, that the expected run had been attempted, and the coast-guard officers and their people from the nearest stations hurried up to participate in the capture. some came by land, while others launched their boats in the hopes of cutting off the "pretty polly" in case she should not have discharged the whole of her cargo. with muffled oars and quick strokes they pulled across the bay; but if they expected to catch joe buntin, or the "pretty polly," they certainly were disappointed; for although they pulled about in every direction till daylight, not a sign or trace of her did they discover. not so unfortunate, however, was lieutenant hogson, for although he did not capture his rival, he made a large seizure of tubs, and several bales of silk, as he supposed, and a considerable number of prisoners, which would altogether bring him in no small amount of prize-money. one prisoner he made afforded him considerable satisfaction. it was no other than tom figgit, who, having jumped out of the boat with a tub on his back, was seized before he had time to disengage himself from his load, and this, with many a grimace, he was now compelled to carry. "i hope you've made up your mind for a year in winchester jail, master tom," said mr hogson, holding a lantern up to his face. "it isn't the first time you've seen its inside, i warrant." "it would be, though; and what's more, i intend to spend my christmas with my wife and family," answered tom, doggedly. the prisoners were now collected, and marched up to the nearest coast-guard station, but there were so many tubs and bales that the coast-guard men were obliged to load themselves heavily with them; for it was found that should only a small guard be left to take charge of them, the smugglers would carry them off. the wind whistled coldly, the rain came down in torrents, and the revenue people and their prisoners had a very disagreeable march through the mud up to the station, tom figgit being the only person who retained his spirits and his temper-though he grumbled in a comical way at being compelled to carry a tub for other people, and insisted that he should retain it for his trouble at the end of his journey. when he reached the guard-house, he slyly tumbled the tub off his shoulders, and down it came on the ground with so heavy a blow that it was stove in. the names of the prisoners were now taken down in due form, and they were told they must be locked up till they could be carried before a magistrate, and be committed to jail for trial. as soon as the officer had done speaking,-"please, sir," said tom, "there's one of the tubs leaking dreadfully, and if it isn't looked to, it will all have run out before the morning; though for the matter of that, it doesn't smell much like spirits." "bring me a glass," said the lieutenant, who, wet and cold, was longing to have a drop of spirits. "i'll soon pass an opinion on your _eau de vie_, master tom." tom smiled, but said nothing, while one of the men brought a glass and broached the leaky tub. "show a light here," said tom. "well, i can't say as how it's got much of the smell of spirits--hang me, if i can make it out." tom filled the glass, and, with a profound bow, worthy of a mandarin, presented it to the officer. lieutenant hogson was thirsty, and, without even smelling the potion, he gulped it down. "salt water, by george!" he exclaimed, furiously, spitting and spluttering it out with all his might, and giving every expression to his disgust. tom, forgetful of the respect due to a king's officer, burst into a fit of uproarious laughter. "well, i warned you, sir. i told you there was something odd about it-ha, ha, ha--and now you find what i said was true--ha, ha, ha!" "what do you mean, you scoundrel?" cried the lieutenant, stamping furiously. "how dare you play such a trick?" "nothing, sir, nothing," answered tom, coolly; "you see i should have been very much surprised if there had been any thing else but salt water; for you see we was bringing those tubs on shore, full of sea-water, for a poor old lady who lives some way inland, and her doctors ordered her to try sea-bathing on the coast of france; but as she couldn't go there herself, you see, she has the water carried all the way from there to here. it's a fancy she has, but it's very natural and regular, and we get well paid for it, sir." "do you, master tom, actually expect me to believe such a pack of gross lies?" stammered out the lieutenant, as well as his rage would let him. "i don't know, sir," answered the smuggler; "some people believe one thing, some another, and i hope you won't think of keeping us here any longer, seeing as how we've done nothing against the law in landing tubs of salt water for old missis grundy up at snigses farm, sir. you may just go and axe her if what i says isn't as true as gospel. it might be the death of her if she didn't get her salt water to bathe in, you know, sir." "old missis grundy! i never heard of her before," exclaimed the lieutenant, growing every moment more angry; "and snigses farm, where's that, i should like to know?" "why, sir, you see it's two or three miles off, and rather a difficult road to find," answered tom, winking at his companions. "you first go up the valley, then you turn down by waterford mill, next you keep up by dead man's lane, and across carver's field, and that will bring you about a quarter of the distance." "why, you scoundrel!" exclaimed the lieutenant, who recognised the names of these places, and knew them to be wide apart, "you impudent rogue, you--why, you are laughing at me!" "oh, no, sir," answered tom, demurely, pulling a lock which hung from his bullet-shaped head, "couldn't think of laughing at you; besides, sir, you knows one can't always make one's face as long as a grave-digger's apprentice's." "i'll make it long enough before i've done with you, master tom, let me tell you," exclaimed the officer. "now let us see what are in those other casks and bales." "what, all them that your people have had the trouble of carrying up here?" cried tom. "lord! sir, the tubs, of course, is all full of salt water, too, for missis grundy." "we shall soon see that, my fine fellow," answered the officer, thinking tom had only told the tale to annoy him; but to make sure, seizing a gimlet, with his own hands he broached tub after tub, his face elongating as he proceeded, and the visions of his prize-money gradually vanished from his eyes. tom and the other smugglers looking on all the time with a derisive smile curling their lips, though prudence prevented their saying any thing which might further exasperate the lieutenant. at last, with an angry oath, he threw down the gimlet. they one and all contained nothing more potent than salt water. he then, with eager haste, anticipating disaster, tore open the bales. they were composed solely of straw and a little packing cloth. "them be life-buoys, sir," said tom, quietly. "we carries them now always, by the recommendation of the humane society." the smugglers now burst into fits of laughter at the rage and disappointment of the outwitted officer, and even his own men could scarcely restrain their tittering at his extravagances. there was, however, not a shadow of excuse for detaining the smugglers. they had a full right to land empty tubs and life-buoys at any hour of the night, and they had not offered the slightest resistance when captured by the coast-guard. in fact, as tom expressed it while narrating his adventures with high glee to joe buntin, they "fairly did the revenue." the next morning, the "pretty polly" appeared beating up towards fairport, and before noon she was at her moorings, and joe was exhibiting a variety of pretty presents to the delighted eyes of miss margaret ramrod. rumours were not long in reaching her ears that one of the largest runs which had been known for ages had been made on the coast at some little distance from fairport, the very night lieutenant hogson seized the tubs of salt water; and joe confessed that he had only one more trip to make before he settled for life. we need not detail the events of the next few days in the quiet town of fairport. those we have narrated served for conversation to the good people for full nine days, and during that time poor mr hogson never once ventured to show his face inside the castle-walls, for he had a strong suspicion, though an unjust one, that pretty mistress margaret had something to do with his disappointment. for her credit, however, we are certain that she was innocent of any intentional falsehood. joe suspected that mr hogson would attempt to pump her; so, as we have seen the contents of a bucket of water thrown down a ship's pump to make it suck, joe took care that the lieutenant should get something for his pains, by telling the young lady to answer, if she was asked, that she had heard him say that he intended landing at--bay. for the three following weeks joe buntin contrived to spend several days on shore in the society of sergeant ramrod's family, though the "pretty polly" during that time made several trips down channel, and was very successful in falling in with some large east indiamen, the pilotage money of which was considerable; and besides that she landed several rich passengers who paid well, so that joe was rapidly becoming a wealthy man. he would have been wise to stick to his lawful and regular calling; but there was so much excitement in smuggling, and the profits of one trip were so much more than he could gain in several winters' hard toil, that he could not resist the temptation. had he taken the trouble of comparing himself with others, he would, we suspect, have considered himself a more honest man than the railroad speculators of the present day. it was again the last quarter of the moon, and the nights were getting dark, when the "pretty polly" once more left her moorings in fairport harbour. now it must not be supposed that she ran over at once to the coast of france, and taking in a cargo, returned as fast as she could to england. joe was not so green as to do that. he, on the contrary, as before, cruised about the channel till he had put two of his pilots on board different vessels, and, to disarm suspicion, they took very good care to present themselves at fairport as soon after their return as possible; and even mr hogson began to fear that there was very little prospect of making prize-money by capturing the "pretty polly," or of wreaking his vengeance on joe. as soon as the last ship into which he had put a pilot was out of sight, joe shaped his course for cherbourg, where he found a cargo of tubs ready for him, but he this time did not take any silks in his venture. in a few hours he was again on his way across the channel. the weather was very favourable. now some people would suppose that we mean to say there was a clear sky, a smooth sea, and a gentle breeze. far from it. it blew so fresh that it might almost be called half a gale of wind; the clouds chased each other over the sky, and threatened to obscure even the stars, which might shed a tell-tale light on the world, and there was a heavy sea running; in truth, it gave every promise of being a dirty night. nothing, however, in this sublunary world can be depended upon except woman's love, and that is durable as adamant, true as the pole-star, and unequalled. the "pretty polly" was about fifteen miles from the land, and joe and tom figgit were congratulating themselves on the favourable state of the weather, when the breeze began to fall and veer about, and at last shifted round to about east-south-east. gradually the sea went down, the clouds cleared off, and the sun shone forth from the blue sky bright and warm. "now this is what i call a do," exclaimed tom figgit, in a tone of discontent. "who'd have thought it? here were we expecting the finest night heaven ever made for a run at this time of the year, and now i shouldn't be surprised that there won't be a cloud in the sky just as we ought to be putting the things on shore." "it can't be helped, tom," answered joe; "our good-luck has not done with us yet, depend on it." "i wish i was sure of it," replied tom, who was in a desponding mood;-he had taken too much cognac the night before. "remember the story about the pitcher going too often to the well getting a cracked nose. now, captain, if i was you i'd just 'bout ship and run back to cherbourg till the weather thickens again. we should lay our course." "gammon, tom. what's the matter with you?" exclaimed joe. "one would suppose that you had been and borrowed one of your wife's petticoats, and was going to turn old woman." "you know, captain, that i've very little of an old woman about me, and that it's for you i'm afeared more than for myself," replied tom, in a reproachful tone. "a year in jail and the loss of a few pounds is the worst that could happen to me, while you would lose the vessel and cargo, and something else you lay more value on than either, i suspect." "well, well, old boy, we'll be guided by reason," said joe. "we won't run any unnecessary risks, depend on it. i'll just take a squint round with the glass to make sure that no cruiser has crept up to us with this shift of wind." saying this, joe carefully swept the horizon with his telescope, but for some time it rested on nothing but the dancing sea and the distant land. at last, however, his eye caught a glimpse of what, to him, appeared a very suspicious-looking sail dead to windward. "what do you make her out to be?" he asked, handing the glass to tom figgit, and pointing towards the sail, which appeared no bigger than a sea-gull's wing gleaming in the rays of the sun. tom took a long look at her. "she's a big cutter, and no mistake," he answered, still keeping his eye to the tube. "and what's more, she's standing this way, and coming up hand over hand with a fresh breeze. i don't like the cut of her jib." "let's have another squint at her," said joe, taking the glass from the mate's hand: then letting it come down suddenly, and giving a slap on his thigh, he exclaimed, "you are right, tom, by george; and what's more, if i don't mistake by the way her gaff-topsail stands, she's the `ranger' cutter which we gave the go-by in the winter, and they've vowed vengeance against us ever since." davis and calloway then gave their opinion, which coincided with the rest, nor did there appear to be any doubt that the approaching vessel was the "ranger." the wind, as we said, had fallen, but there was still a considerable swell, the effects of the past gale, which made the little vessel pitch and tumble about, and considerably retarded her progress. joe now scanned his own sails thoroughly to see that they drew well, and then glanced his eye over the side of the cutter to judge how fast she was going through the water. he was far from satisfied with the result of his observations. "it won't do," he remarked; "we must be up slick, and run for it, or she'll be overhauling us before dark. if we was blessed with the breeze she's got, we wouldn't mind her. rig out the square-sail boom, bend on the square-sail. come, bear a hand my hearties, be quick about it. none of us have much fancy for a twelvemonth in winchester jail, i suppose. that'll do; now hoist away." and himself setting an example of activity, the helm being put up, the main-sheet was eased off, a large square-sail set, and the cutter, dead before the wind, was running away from her supposed enemy. the square-topsail was next hoisted, and every stitch of canvas she could carry was clapped on, and under the influence of the returning breeze, the "pretty polly" danced merrily over the waters, though not at all approaching to the speed her impatient crew desired. tom figgit shook his head. "i thought it would be so," he muttered. "i knowed it when i seed the wind dropping. well, if it weren't for joe, and to see that blowed coastguarder, hogson, a-grinning at us, and rubbing his paws with delight, i shouldn't care. if we might fight for it it would be a different thing, but to be caught like mice by a cat, without a squeak for life, is very aggrawating, every one must allow." tom had some reason for his melancholy forebodings, for the "pretty polly" most certainly appeared to be out of luck. do all she could, the "ranger," bringing up a fresh breeze, gained rapidly on her. the people in the revenue-cruiser had evidently seen her soon after she saw them, and, suspecting her character, had been using every exertion to come up with her. they had, in fact, long been on the watch for her, and quickly recognised her as their old friend. the smugglers walked the deck, vainly whistling for a wind, but, though they all whistled in concert, the partial breeze refused to swell their sails till it had filled those of their enemy. nothing they could do, either wetting their sails, or altering her trim by shifting the cargo, would make the "pretty polly" go along faster. one great object was to retain a considerable distance from her till darkness covered the face of the deep, when they might hope more easily to make their escape. as the sun went down the heavens grew most provokingly clear, and the stars shone forth from the pure sky, so that the smugglers saw and were seen by the revenue-cutter, and the character of the "pretty polly" was too well-known by every cruiser on the station to allow her to hope to escape unquestioned. still joe boldly held on his course. he never withdrew his eye from his pursuer, in order to be ready to take advantage of the slightest change in her proceedings, but he soon saw that he must make the best use of his heels and his wits, or lose his cargo. poor joe, he thought of his charming margaret, he thought of his good resolutions, he thought of tom's evil prognostications, but he was not a fellow to be daunted at trifles, and he still trusted that something in the chapter of accidents would turn up to enable him to escape. the breeze at last came up with the "pretty polly," but at the same time the "ranger" drew still nearer. all their means of expediting her movements had been exhausted, every inch of canvas she could carry was spread aloft, and even below the main-boom and square-sail-boom water sails had been extended, so that the craft looked like a large sea-bird, with a small black body, skimming, with outspread wings, along the surface of the deep. the land, at no great distance, laid broad on their beam to the starboard. with anger and vexation they saw that all their efforts to save their cargo would probably be fruitless. "it can't be helped, my lads," cried joe; "better luck next time. in with all that light canvas. be smart about it, stand by the square-sail halliards--lower away; hoist the foresail again; down with the helm, bill, while we get a pull at the main-sheet. we must run into shoal water and sink the tubs. it will come to that, i see." as joe said, there was no time to lose, for the revenue-cruiser was now a little more than a mile distant, looming large in the fast-increasing obscurity of night. there promised, however, to be too much light during the night for them to hope to elude the sharp and practised eyes of her lookouts. while the smuggler, with the wind nearly abeam, was running in for the land, her crew were busily employed in getting the tubs on deck, and slinging them in long lines together, with heavy weights attached, over the side, so as to be able, by cutting a single lanyard, to let them all sink at once. no sooner did they alter their course than their pursuer did the same. they had, at all events, gained the important advantage of escaping being overhauled in daylight. they now stood steadily on till they got within a quarter of a mile of the land, the revenue-cutter not having gained materially on them. by this time every tub was either on deck or over the side. "starboard the helm a little, tom--steady now!" sung out joe; "we'll have the marks on directly; i can just make out pucknose knoll and farleigh church steeple. now mind, when i sing out cut, cut all of you." it was not without some difficulty that the points he mentioned could be distinguished, and none but eyes long accustomed to peer through darkness could have seen objects on the shore at all. his aim was to bring certain marks on the shore in two lines to bisect each other, at which point the tubs were to be sunk, thus enabling him to find them again at a future day. "starboard again a little, tom--steady now--that will do--luff you may, luff--i have it. cut now, my hearties, cut!" he exclaimed, and the next moment a heavy splash told that all the tubs slung outside had been cut away, and sunk to the bottom. "stand by to heave the rest overboard," he continued, and a minute afterwards, with fresh bearings, the remainder of the cargo was committed to the deep. "now let's haul up for fairport, and get home to comfort our wives and sweethearts. better luck next time." with this philosophical observation, joe buttoned up his pea-jacket, and twisted his red comforter round his neck, determined to make himself comfortable, and to bear his loss like a man. by the "pretty polly's" change of course she soon drew near the "ranger," when a shot from one of the guns of the latter came flying over her masthead. on this significant notice that the cruiser wished to speak to her, joe, not being anxious for a repetition of the message, let fly his jib-sheet, and his cutter coming round on the other tack, he kept his foresail to windward and his helm down, thus remaining almost stationary. a boat soon pulled alongside with the mate of the cruiser, who, with his crew, each carrying a lantern, overhauled every part of the vessel's hold, but not even a drop of brandy was to be found, nor a quid of tobacco. "sorry, sir, you've taken all this trouble," said joe, touching his hat to the officer. "i thought, sir, you know'd we was a temp'rance vessel." it was diamond cut diamond. the officer looked at joe, and burst out laughing, though disappointed at not making a seizure. "tell that to the marines, mister buntin," he answered. "if you hadn't, half an hour ago, enough spirits on board to make the whole ship's company of a line-of-battle ship as drunk as fiddlers, i'm a dutchman." "i can't help, sir, what you thinks," replied joe, humbly; "but i suppose you won't detain us? we wants to get to fairport to-night, to drink tea with our wives and nurse our babies." "you may go, my fine fellow, and we will bring in your tubs in the morning," answered the mate, as he stepped into his boat. "thank ye, sir," said joe, making a polite bow, but looking very much inclined to expedite his departure with a kick, but discretion withheld him. "let draw!" he sang out in a voice which showed the true state of his feelings, beneath his assumed composure; "now about with her." in a short time after, the "pretty polly" was safely moored in fairport river. the next morning at daybreak, the "ranger" was seen hovering in rather dangerous proximity to the spot where the tubs had been sunk. she was then observed to get her dredges out, and to be groping evidently for the hidden treasures. in the course of the day, joe and his crew had the mortification to see her come into the harbour with the greater part of their cargo on board. of course they all looked as innocent as if none of them had ever before seen a tub, for there was nothing to betray them, though it was not pleasant to see their property in the hands of others. the revenue-cutter then hauling alongside the quay, sent all the tubs she had on board up to the castle, where they were shut up securely while she went back to grope for more. joe watched all these proceedings with apparently calm indifference, walking up and down all the time on the quay, with a short pipe in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets. no sooner, however, had darkness set in, than he and his companions might have been seen consulting earnestly together, and going round to the most trustworthy of their acquaintance. what was the subject of their consultations may hereafter be guessed at. their plans, whatever they were, were soon matured, and then joe repaired to pay his accustomed visit to sergeant ramrod and his grand-daughter. joe buntin was, as i have hinted, not the only lover margaret ramrod possessed, which was, of course, no fault of hers. one of them, for there might have been half-a-dozen at least, was james lawson, a coast-guard man, belonging to fairport; and if he was aware that he was a rival of his superior officer it did not afflict him. as it happened, he was stationed at the castle to guard the tubs which had been captured in the morning. having seen that every thing was safe, he soon grew tired of watching on the top of the castle, for it was a dark, cold night, with a thick, driving rain, and a high wind, so he persuaded himself that there could be no harm looking into sergeant ramrod's snug room, lighted up by pretty margaret's bright eyes, and warmed by a blazing fire. the sergeant welcomed him cordially, and margaret mixed him a glass of hot brandy and water, while discussing which, a knock was heard at the castle-gate, on which mistress margaret, throwing her apron over her head, ran out to admit the visitors. she was absent a minute or more; probably she had some difficulty in again closing the gates on so windy a night: at last she returned, followed by no less a person than joe buntin, and his shadow, tom figgit. a smile stole over margaret's pretty mouth as she watched joe, who looked as fierce as he could at lawson, and by ramrod's invitation, sat himself down directly opposite the revenue-man. lawson was not to be stared out of countenance, so, notwithstanding joe's angry glances, he firmly kept his post. tom figgit quietly sipped his grog, eyeing lawson all the time much in the way that a cat does a mouse she is going to devour, so that at last the revenue-man, feeling himself rather uncomfortable, he scarcely knew why, helped himself thoughtlessly to another stiff glass. joe laughed and talked for all the party, and told several capital stories, contriving in the interval to whisper a word into margaret's ear, at which she looked down and laughed slyly. she was soon afterwards seen filling up the coast-guard man's glass, only by mistake she poured in hollands instead of water. the error was not discovered, and lawson became not only very sagacious, but brave in the extreme. after some time he recollected that it was his duty to keep a look-out from the top of the castle, and accordingly rose to resume his post. joe on this jumped up also, and wishing the old couple and their grand-daughter good-night, took his departure, followed by tom; sergeant ramrod and lawson closing the gates securely behind them. no sooner were joe and his mate outside the walls than they darted down a small alley which led to the water, and at a little sheltered slip they found a boat, with a coil of rope and some blocks stowed away in the stern-sheets. joe, giving a peculiarly low whistle, two other men appeared crawling from under a boat, which had been turned with the keel uppermost on the beach, and then all four jumping in, pulled round underneath the castle-wall to a nook, where they could not be observed from the quay even in the daytime. it was, as we have mentioned, blowing and raining, and as dark as pitch, so that our friends had no reason to complain of the weather. after feeling about for some time, joe discovered a small double line, to which he fastened one of the stouter ropes, and hauling away on one end of it, brought it back again into the boat. who had rove the small line we cannot say, but we fear that there was a little traitor in the garrison; perhaps joe or tom had contrived to do it before they entered the sergeant's sitting-room. "hold on fast," joe whispered to his comrades; "i'll be up in a moment." saying this, he climbed up the rope, and soon had his face flush with the summit of the castle-walls. looking round cautiously, he observed no one, so he climbed over the parapet, and advanced across the platform to the top of a flight of steps which communicated with the lower part of the building. he looked over the railing, but his eyes could not pierce the gloom, so he descended the steps, and had the satisfaction to find lawson fast asleep at the bottom of them, sheltered from the rain by one of the arches. "all's right: he won't give us much trouble, at all events," he muttered to himself; and returning to the parapet he summoned his companions. two other boats had now joined the first, and, one after the other, twelve smugglers scaled the walls. others were, it must be understood, watching at various points in the neighbourhood, to give the earliest notice of the approach of the coast-guard. joe stationed two men by the side of lawson to bind and gag him if he awoke, which he was not likely to do, while the rest proceeded with their work. they soon contrived to break open the door of the store, opening from the platform, where the tubs had been deposited; then each man, carrying one at a time, like ants at their work, they transported them to the parapet of the castle-wall. from thence, with great rapidity, they were lowered into the boats, and then conveyed round to the foot of a garden belonging to an uninhabited house, which, of course, had the character of being haunted by spirits. joe and his friends worked with a will, as much delighted with the thought of doing the revenue as at recovering their property. the greater number had been thus secured when the rain ceased, and the clouds driving away, the smugglers were afraid of being seen by their opponents. they therefore secured the door of the nearly empty store, and all descending, unrove the rope from the breech of the gun to which it had been fastened, so as to leave no trace of their proceedings. the next morning lawson, on recovering from his tipsy slumbers, seeing the door closed, reported that all was right. mr hogson was the first person to make the discovery that all was wrong, and his astonishment and rage may be more easily imagined than described. nearly every tub of the rich prize had disappeared; and the lieutenant swore he was certain that wicked little vixen, margaret ramrod, had something to do with it. neither sergeant ramrod nor lawson could in any way account for it; and as it would have been a subject of mirth to all their brother-officers, who would not have shared in the prize, the authorities of fairport thought it wiser not to say much on the subject. several persons were suspected of having had a hand in the transaction; but the smugglers were known to be too true to each other to afford the remotest chance of discovering the culprits. soon after this joe buntin married margaret ramrod; and, wonderful to relate, forswore smuggling ever after. whether her persuasions, or from finding it no longer profitable, had most influence, is not known; at all events, he is now one of the most successful and active pilots belonging to fairport, and though he does not mention names, he is very fond, among other stories, of telling how a certain friend of his did the revenue. as soon as old sleet had finished his story, which was much more effective when told by him than as it now stands written down by me, he scraped his right foot back, made a swing with his hat, and was rolling forward, when hearty cried out, "stop, stop, old friend, your lips want moistening after that long yarn, i'm sure. what will you have, champagne, or claret, or sherry, or brandy, or rum, or--" the honest seaman grinned from ear to ear. "grog," he answered, emphatically. "there's nothing like that to my mind, mr hearty. it's better nor all your french washes put together." due praise was bestowed on joe buntin's history, but he evidently thought the extra glass of grog he had won of far more value. "health to you, gentlemen and ladies all, and may this sweet craft never want a master nor a mistress either," he rapped out; then fearing he had said something against propriety, he rolled away to join his messmates forward. chapter twenty four. the polacca-brig again--the "zebra" in chase--reflections on africa and the slave-trade. it was now time for the officers of the "zebra" to return on board their ship. another night and day passed away much in the same manner as its predecessors. all this time we were edging over to the african coast. miss mizen was rapidly recovering her strength, indeed she could no longer be declared an invalid, and it was very evident that a sea-life perfectly agreed with her. though i missed bubble's fun and anecdotes, and his merry laugh and good-natured visage, i must confess that i much enjoyed the society of the two ladies. mrs mizen was a kind-hearted, right-minded, good-natured, sensible, motherly woman, without a particle of affectation or nonsense of any sort. she had seen a good deal of the world, and of the people in it, and could talk well of what she had seen. under present circumstances, indeed, i preferred her, as a companion, to her daughter. barring the difference of age, they were very like each other. miss mizen also treated me with the utmost frankness and kindness as the friend of her intended husband, and i often enjoyed a pleasant conversation with her, though, of course, it more frequently fell to my share to entertain her mother. while the fine weather lasted, the life we led was excessively pleasant; but as winter was now rapidly approaching, we knew that we must look out for squalls and heavy seas. we had, as i before remarked, been making our way to the westward along the african coast, now making the land, and then standing off again at night-time. one morning when daylight broke, we found ourselves rather in-shore of the brig. as i came on deck to relieve porpoise, i saw her signalising. we got the signal-book. "what is rullock talking about?" asked my brother-officer, as i was looking over the leaves of harriot's well-known work. "a suspicious sail to the north-west. stay where you are. i shall chase, but be back by nightfall," said i; on which porpoise ordered the answering signal to be hoisted. the brig now crowded all sail, but as she kept away i saw that the bunting was again at work. "if we do not appear by noon to-morrow, return to malta," said i, interpreting the flags. "and so our pleasant cruise will be up: but all things pleasant must come to an end. i wish it could have lasted longer." "well, porpoise, what do you make of the stranger he is after?" "by--that she is no other than our friend the greek polacca-brig," he exclaimed, almost letting his glass fall from aloft, where he had gone to get a look of the vessel the brig was chasing. "i have a great mind to rouse hearty up, and get him to disobey orders, and go in chase of her also. i don't like the thoughts of the pirate being captured without our being present." "remember that we have ladies on board, and i don't think hearty will be inclined to run the risk of carrying away our spars or mast for any such gratification," i remarked. "he'll be for obedience in this case, depend on it." "that's the worst of having ladies on board," answered porpoise with a sigh. "but, i say, they have been rather more alive on board the brig than i should have given them credit for. how could they have suspected that the polacca out there was our friend?" "you forget that will bubble is on board, and probably he was on deck, and aloft, indeed, at sunrise, and made out the greek," i answered, not that i considered that there was any want of strict discipline or sufficient alertness kept on board the brig, though the crew were any thing but first-rate specimens of men-of-war's men. by the by, that reminds me that i should like to say a few words about manning the navy. but i won't, though, simply because the subject is just here somewhat out of place. we are off the northern coast of africa in a yacht with some ladies on board, and they might be bored, and we have to watch the proceedings of the brig-of-war and the vessel of which she is in chase. only i would strongly urge any members of parliament, or other law-makers, or persons of influence, whose eyes may glance over these pages to think, and talk, and _do_ very seriously about the matter. it will not bear letting alone or sleeping over. something must be done, and at once. i've known ships-of-war go to sea with not a quarter of the men seamen--because seamen were not to be got. how would it fare with us had we to engage in a downright earnest naval war? our men, it will be answered, will fight like britons; so they will, i doubt not, but is it just to oppose landsmen to the well-trained seamen of other nations? is it just to the able seamen to make them do the work which should be shared by others? but now we will again look after the brig-of-war and the chase. the polacca, as soon as she saw that the british man-of-war was in pursuit of her, made all sail to the northward and westward. old rullock was evidently determined that she should not escape from any neglect on his part of carrying enough sail. royals and studding-sails were quickly set, and under a wide spread of snow-white canvas away stood the "zebra," leaving us jogging slowly on, with the purpose of returning to the spot whence we started. hearty's surprise, as may be supposed, was very considerable, and so was that of his lady guests, when they found that the brig had run away from us. "however, mrs mizen, i suppose we must obey orders, must we not?" said he, with a shrug of his shoulders. "if you do not blame captain rullock for his treachery, i am sure that i do not, since he has left with me hostages of so much value for his safe return." mrs mizen and her daughter seemed to think the affair a very good joke, only they could not understand why the cutter should not go in chase of the polacca as well as the brig-of-war. "perhaps the captain wishes to have all the honour of capturing the pirate by himself without our assistance," observed porpoise; "i suppose the fellow will show fight should he come up with him." "no fear of that," i remarked. "the truth is, i suspect, that captain rullock feared, that had he allowed the yacht to proceed in chase of the pirate, we might have come up with her before he could, and had to bear the brunt of the action. he probably would not have cared very much about that, had there been only four yachting gentlemen on board to be shot at, but the case was very different when his sister and niece might be placed in danger." "he did very right. there can be no dispute about it," said hearty. "we must bear our disappointment like men, and during breakfast we will consider what amusement we can afford our guests, to recompense them for the absence of the brig in the landscape--or rather seascape we ought to call it--for little enough of the land have we had this cruise." we had a great deal of amusing conversation during breakfast. it is a pleasant meal everywhere, if people are well and in spirits, and nowhere is it more pleasant than at sea under the same provisions. "what do you say to a look at the african coast, mrs mizen?" exclaimed hearty. "we could get there very soon--could we not, porpoise?" "we should be well in with the land, so as to have a good view of it before the evening, and if the wind holds, we might be back here before the brig-of-war returns to look for us," was the answer. "capital; then let us stand in there at once," said hearty. "it is a fine, mountainous, bold coast, very picturesque. you will have your sketching things ready, i hope," he added, looking at miss mizen. he had not learnt to call her laura when any one else was present. miss mizen said she would get her drawing-board and colour-box ready, and porpoise went on deck to put the cutter's head to the southward. a steady breeze from the south-west enabled us to stand in for the land close-hauled. as we rapidly approached it, the mountains, with their lofty peaks and wooded sides, seemed to rise out of the water like the scene at a theatre, till the lower lands at their base--rocky, undulating heights, and even the seashore--became clearly visible. "how very different is this scenery from the common notion of africa!" said miss mizen, as, with hearty's help, she was arranging her sketching-board, to make a view of the coast. "i have hitherto always pictured it to myself as a country of arid sands and dense jungle." "you'd find jungle enough and sand enough in many parts, miss mizen, where i have been," observed porpoise. "but both in the north and south there are districts which will vie in fertility with most in the world. just think of egypt; what an abundance of corn does that produce! all along this north coast are many fertile districts: so there are on the west coast, only it is rather too hot there to be pleasant; and then at the cape and natal are to be found spots rich in various productions." "you draw a glowing picture of the country, mr porpoise," observed mrs mizen. "i do, ma'am, because the country deserves it," he answered. "the world owes a great deal to africa, and i should like to see every possible attempt made to repay it by continued and strenuous efforts for the civilisation of her people. the work is a very great one, there is no doubt about that, and a few feeble and isolated efforts will not accomplish it. the merchant princes of england must take the matter up, and send out several expeditions at the same time. the officers should be experienced, energetic men, the vessels well supplied with merchandise, and well-armed to protect it. but what can we hope for while the abominable slave-trade still flourishes? england is doing her best to put it down, but she is but ill supported by other nations. america, with all her boasting about freedom, protects and encourages those engaged in it; while france, professing to be the most civilised and liberal of countries, does the same. spain and portugal only occasionally pretend to interfere with a very bad grace, and secretly aid and abet the wretches carrying it on under their flag. i say, at any cost and at every cost, england must put it down. no matter if she goes to war with all the world to do so. it will be a glorious war for the most holy cause, and honest men will be able to pray with sincerity and faith, that heaven will protect her in it." "i am very glad to hear you speak so, mr porpoise," said mrs mizen; "i will answer for it, that no war would be so popular among the women of england as a war against slavery and the slave-trade. no one worthy of the name of an englishwoman would refuse to sell her jewels and every thing of value to support it." "that's the spirit that will put it down, ma'am," exclaimed porpoise, enthusiastically. "when we sailors know that we have the prayers and good wishes of the ladies of england with us, we should very soon sweep all our enemies from the seas." the rest of the party responded in most respects to these sentiments. hearty suggested that much might be hoped for from a wise and firm diplomacy, and by calmly waiting the course of events. "no, no," answered porpoise. "that's what the people in parliament say, when they want to shelve a question. do nothing, and let affairs take their own course. it's a very easy way of doing nothing, but that is not like you, mr hearty. you would manage the matter in a very different way, i'm sure, if it was left to you." "i should be very much puzzled if the question were left for me to decide it," said hearty. "what do you think i should do?" "oh, i will soon tell you what you would do," replied porpoise. "why, you would look out for all the energetic, dashing officers you could find, and send them to the coast in command of as many fast steamers, and other small craft, with orders to overhaul every suspicious sail they could find on the coast. then you would have a whacking big fleet in the channel, and several others in different parts of the world. you would not forget to keep your coast defences in good order, and to have a compact well-disciplined army on shore, and a numerous trained militia, ready to call out at a moment's notice. that's what you and every other sensible man would do, mr hearty, and then i think we need have no fear that any one would causelessly attempt to molest us, or that we should be unable to make other nations keep their treaties with us." "bravo, porpoise, bravo!" cried hearty. "i wish that you were prime minister, or first lord of the admiralty, or dictator, or something of that sort for a short time. i doubt not but that you would get things in prime order in a very short time." while this conversation was going on, we were rapidly drawing in with the coast. miss mizen made two or three very masterly sketches, though the blue sea and water filled up the larger portion of the paper. the less there is in a subject the more does it exhibit a master's talent if the picture is interesting. a fresh breeze had been blowing all day, but towards evening the wind fell, and the cutter lay floating idly on the water. we were assembled after dinner as usual on deck, laughing, talking, yarn-spinning, and occasionally reading aloud, enjoying the moments to the full, and little dreaming of what a few short hours were to bring forth. evening was about to throw its dusky veil over the african shore. the idle flap of the mainsail showed us that there was a stark calm. a fish would occasionally leap out of the water, or the fin of some monster of the deep might be seen as it swam by in pursuit of prey, or a sea-bird would come swooping past to ascertain what strange craft had ventured into its haunts, ere it winged its way back to its roosting-place for the night, amid the crags of the neighbouring headland. i was taking a turn on deck, when, as i looked over the side and measured our distance from the land, it appeared to me that, although the calm was so complete, we had considerably decreased our distance from it. walking forward, i asked snow if he had remarked any thing particular. "why, yes, sir; i was just going to speak to you or mr porpoise, about the matter," he answered. "i've been watching the land for an hour or more past, and it strikes me that there is a strong current, which sets in-shore to the westward hereabouts; it's just the sort of thing, which, if we hadn't found out in time, might have carried us much too close in on a dark night to be pleasant; as it is, if a breeze doesn't spring up, and we continue to drift in, we must just get the boats out and tow her head off shore, so there'll be no great harm come of that." "you are right," said i; "there's little doubt about it; i'll mention the matter to mr porpoise, and he'll approve of what you propose. but i do not think there's any use in letting the ladies know, or they'll be fancying all sorts of dreadful things--that they are going to be cast on shore, or eaten up by lions, or murdered by savages. i should not like to give them any uneasiness which can be helped." i watched the old man's countenance while i was speaking, to ascertain what he really thought about the matter. the truth was that i was not quite satisfied myself with our position. i had been along that coast some years before, looking into several of the ports; and i remembered that the moors inhabiting the villages just above there, bore anything but a good character. i began to blame myself, when too late, for not having thought of this before. when the brig-of-war was with us, it mattered little; for no pirates would have ventured to come out to attack her: they would have known that she would have proved a dear bargain, even if they could ultimately have taken her, and very little value to them if taken, but with a yacht the case was different. we could not fail to appear a tempting prize, and easily won. had we, however, been without ladies on board, we should, i expect, all have enjoyed the fun of showing the rascals that they had caught a tartar, and am fully certain that we should have been able to render a good account of them. i remember that these ideas crossed my mind as i walked the deck, waiting for an opportunity of speaking to porpoise, who was still engaged in conversation with mrs mizen; then i burst into a fit of laughter at the thought of the ideal enemy i had so busily conjured up to fight with. porpoise, who just then joined me, inquired the cause of my merriment. "it suddenly occurred to me that we were off a somewhat ill-famed part of the coast, and i could not help fancying i saw half-a-dozen or more piratical row-boats come stealing out from under the cliffs there, with the intention of cutting our throats and rifling the vessel," i answered; "but of course it is a mere fancy. i never heard of an english yacht being attacked by pirates hereabouts, and it would be folly to make ourselves anxious about such a bugbear." now even while i was saying this i was not altogether satisfied in my own mind about the matter. if, as i before said, we had had only men on board, we might have fought to the last, and could only then have been killed; but should we be overpowered, the fate of the women committed to our charge would be too horrible to contemplate. "i'm glad that you think there is no cause for apprehension," said i to porpoise. "still it might be as well to keep a sharp look-out during the night, and should a breeze spring up, to give the coast a more respectful offing." "i'll do that same," he answered. "i feel no inclination to turn in myself, so that should any of the natives of whom you are suspicious be inclined to visit us, they may not find us altogether unprepared." the ladies soon after this retired to their cabin; we only then had an opportunity of mentioning the subject to hearty. he rather laughed at the notion, but begged that he might be called when the fighting began. after taking a few turns on deck, he also turned in, and porpoise was left in charge of the deck. i, after a little time, went to my cabin; it seemed too ridiculous to lose my night's rest for the sake of an idea. i had slept about a couple of hours, when i awoke by hearing the sound of porpoise's voice. he was standing directly over my skylight, which, on account of the heat of the weather, was kept off. "can you make any thing out, snow?" he asked. "i think i can now, sir. it seems to me that there are four or five dark spots on the water, just clear of the shadow of that headland in there," was the answer. "i can't just make out what they are for certain." i was on deck in a few seconds, with my night-glass at my eye pointed in the direction indicated. "what think you of their being row-boats?" said i. "they look wonderfully like them." "i can't say that they are not," answered the old man. "they may be rocks just showing their heads above water. but what, if they are boats, can they be doing out there at this time of night?" "coming to pay us a visit, perhaps," i remarked. "we really should be prepared in case of accidents, porpoise. by timely preparations we averted danger once before, when otherwise, in all probability, we should have had our throats cut. do not let us be less wise on this occasion." "certainly not," said porpoise; "and as discretion is the better part of valour, we will try and tow the cutter offshore. it will prolong the time till our visitors can overtake us, and will give us a better chance of having a breeze spring up. if we get that, we shall be able to laugh at any number of such fellows. they are only formidable when they can find a vessel becalmed. after all, i don't say that those are pirates, and if it were not for the ladies on board, we would very quickly learn the truth of the case." the thorough john bull spoke out in these remarks. porpoise did not at all like the idea of flying from an enemy under any circumstances, and as he had to do it, he wished to find every possible reason for so doing. "turn the hands up and get the boats out, snow; we'll see what towing will do," he continued. "you see that this current is setting us far too much in-shore, and, at all events, it is necessary to get a better offing before daybreak, lest no breeze should spring up in the morning to carry us back to the spot where rullock was to find us." three boats were got into the water and manned forthwith; porpoise, hearty, snow, and i, being the only people remaining on board. the crews gave way with a will, and the cutter soon began to slip through the water. she went along, probably, faster than the current was carrying her in an opposite direction. these arrangements being made, i took another scrutiny of the suspicious objects under the land. i had no longer any doubt in my mind that they were boats, and that they were pulling out to sea towards us. it was now time to call up hearty. we had seen no necessity before this of making him unnecessarily anxious, and the noise of lowering the boats had not roused him; indeed, he would have slept through a hurricane, or while a dozen broadsides were being fired, i verily believe, if not called. he was brisk enough, however, when once roused up. as i expected, he was very anxious at the state of affairs. "we were thoughtless and unwise to stand in so close to this shore," he remarked. "brine, my friend, we must sink the cutter or blow her up rather than yield to those villains!" he spoke with much emotion, and i could sincerely enter into his feelings. he did not utter a word of complaint against porpoise or me, though i think he might have had some reason in blaming us for allowing the cutter to get into her present condition. he paced the deck with hurried steps, looking every now and then anxiously through the glass towards the objects we had observed, and then he would hail the boats. "give way, my lads--give way!" he shouted; "if any one knocks up, i'll take his place." again he looked through his glass. "can they be rocks?" he exclaimed. "i seen no alteration in their appearance." "i do, though, i am sorry to say," i answered. "they have got considerably more out of the shade of the land since i first saw them." this became very evident after some time; nor could hearty any longer doubt the fact. i counted five of them, largish boats (i suspected), each pulling some twenty oars or more, probably double-banked. very likely each boat carried not much fewer than sixty men--fearful odds for the "frolic" to contend with. the "zebra" would not have found them altogether contemptible antagonists, if, as i said, my suspicions were correct as to their size. still, i hoped that i might be mistaken; we could not be certain as to their object. they might be mere fishing-boats magnified by the obscurity, or coasters which had pulled out in the expectation of getting a breeze in the morning to carry them alongshore, or to get into some current which might set in the direction in which they wished to go. all these ideas i suggested to hearty; still my original notion outweighed all others in my mind. indeed i have always found it wisest to take the point of view which requires the most caution; precautions can, at the worst, only give a little trouble; the neglect of them may bring ruin and misery. on this principle i was most anxious to get as far as possible from the shore. no one was idle. happily the ladies slept on, so that we had not the additional pain at feeling that they were left in a state of anxiety. porpoise took the helm; snow went forward to direct the boats how to pull; while hearty and i busied ourselves in getting out the arms, arranging the ammunition, loading the guns, and muskets, and pistols; indeed, in making every preparation for a desperate struggle. the boats came on very warily. i suspected that we had been seen in the afternoon from the shore, and that as we appeared a tempting prize, the expedition had been planned to capture us. "a very short time longer will settle the question," said i to hearty. "we must endeavour to keep them at a respectful distance as long as we can; should they once get alongside they would overpower us with their numbers. happily these sort of gentry are as great cowards as they are scoundrels, and a firm front is certain to make them consider whether the profit is likely to be worth the risk of a battle." i have gone through a good many anxious moments in the course of my life, but never did i feel more apprehension for the result of an adventure than i did for that in which we were at present engaged. a waning moon had now risen, and showed us very clearly the number and character of the strangers--whether friends or foes was hereafter to be decided. another look at them through my night-glass showed me that they were large boats, as i had suspected, and full of men. "there is little use in making any farther efforts to escape," said i to hearty; "i would hoist in the boats and serve out some grog to the men. they want something after their exertions, though they do not require dutch courage to defend the ship." porpoise agreed to my suggestions; they were immediately put into execution. the men threw off their grog as coolly as if they had been about to sail a match at a regatta, instead being about to engage in deadly fight. "here's to your health, mr hearty, and gentlemen all, and may we just give those scoundrels out there a thorough good drubbing if they attempt to attack us," quoth snow, in the name of his shipmates. "thank you--thank you, my men," answered hearty; "you'll act like true-hearted englishmen, and what men can do you'll do, i know, to protect the helpless women we have on board. i won't make you a long speech, you don't want that to rouse your courage, but i do ask you not to yield while one man of us remains alive on deck." "that's just what we are resolved to do, mr hearty; no fear, sir," answered all hands, and they would have cheered lustily, had i not restrained them for two reasons: i was unwilling to awaken the ladies sooner than was necessary, and also should the pirates have expected to surprise us, it would be a great advantage if we, on the contrary, should be able to surprise them. i mentioned this latter idea to my companions, and they immediately entered into it. the moors had been too far off to allow them to perceive us hoisting in the boats, so they could not tell but that we were all fast asleep on board. accordingly, the guns were loaded up to the muzzle with langrage and musket-balls; pistols and cutlasses were served out to the men, and it was encouraging to see their pleased manner as they stuck the one into their belts, and buckled the other round their waists. some had, in addition, muskets, and a reserve of small-arms was placed amidships to be resorted to in case of necessity. the men then went and lay down so as to be effectually concealed under the bulwarks: porpoise and i only walked the deck, as if we were the ordinary watch, and we agreed to pretend to be looking seaward when the boats drew near, as if unconscious of their approach. meantime hearty went below to perform the painful task of informing the ladies of our dangerous position. he did it with his usual tact. "mrs mizen," i heard him say, "i must beg you and miss mizen to dress, but not to come on deck. we have got too close in-shore, and some moorish boats appear to be coming off to us; they may not mean to do us any mischief, but it is as well to be prepared, and we do not intend to allow them to come too near to us." there was a short pause. i heard no exclamations of surprise or terror--no cries, or lamentations, or forebodings of evil, but mrs mizen simply answered in a firm voice:-"we trust, then, mr hearty, to you and your companions to defend us, and may a merciful god give you strength to fight and beat off our assailants!" "that's a speech worthy of a true heroine," exclaimed porpoise, who had likewise overheard it. "just the thing to strengthen our nerves, and to put true courage into us. i trust, mrs mizen, we shall not be long in beating off the pirates," he added, looking down the skylight; "do you, in the mean time, keep snug below, and don't mind the uproar." "now, my lads, be ready; we mustn't let the blackguards get on board to frighten the ladies, mind that. when i give the word, be up and at them." porpoise having thus delivered himself, in accordance with our plan, pretended to be intently looking over the taffrail. the row-boats were all the time drawing disagreeably near, and i had no longer in my mind any doubt as to their character and intention. we, also, were anxiously looking out for a breeze which might enable us to meet them at greater advantage. i took a glance at the compass; as i did so i felt a light breeze fan my cheek; it came from the westward. the cutter's head was at that time tending in-shore, for as soon as the boats had been hoisted in she had again lost all steerage-way, and had gradually gone round. again the puff of air came stronger, and she gathered sufficient steerage-way to enable us to wear round just before the boats reached us. the pirates must have thought that we were very blind not to perceive them. silently they pulled towards us in two columns: we let them approach within a quarter of a cable's length. just as a tiger springs on his prey, they pulled on rapidly towards us, evidently expecting to catch us unprepared. "now, my lads, up and at them?" sung out porpoise, in imitation of the speech of a somewhat better-known hero. our jolly yachtsmen did not require a second summons. up they sprang to their allotted duties. "steady!" added porpoise, "take aim before you fire. those forward aim at the headmost boats; let the after guns give account of those coming up next astern. now give it them." the orders were comprehended, and executed promptly and well. cries and groans and shouts from the row-boats followed the simultaneous discharge from our great-guns and small-arms. the pirates ceased rowing, and a second intervened before they fired in return, but their shot generally flew wide of us, our unexpected commencement of the action having evidently thrown them into not a little confusion. for an instant it occurred to me that we might have been too precipitate, and that perhaps after all they might not have been pirates, but for some reason or other had come off to us at that unseasonable hour. it was therefore, in one respect, a positive relief to me when they began to fire, and i discovered their real character. still undaunted, on they came. before, however, they could get alongside, our people had time to load again and fire; this time not a shot but took effect. the moors did not relish the dose; some attempted to spring on board, but were driven back by pike and cutlass into the sea, hearty setting the example of activity and courage by rushing here and there, cutting and thrusting and slashing away, so that he did the work of half a dozen men. indeed i may say the same without vanity of all on board, or we could not have contended for a minute against the fearful odds opposed to us. the low deck of a yacht, it must be remembered, does not present the difficulties to assailants which even a brig-of-war or an ordinary high-sided merchantman is capable of doing. ours was literally a hand-to-hand fight without the slightest protection, our slight bulwarks alone separating us from our enemies when they once got alongside. happily the breeze increased, and giving us way through the water, the moorish boats having failed to hook on to us, we once more slipped through them. some of the men in the bows continued firing at us, but a little delay occurred before the rest could get out their oars to follow the cutter. the chiefs of each boat appeared to be holding a consultation, and i only hoped that they would come to the decision that the grapes were sour, or rather that the game was not worth the candle to play it by, as the frenchmen say, and give up the pursuit. but they were not so reasonable; they probably thought that if we fought so desperately we had something on board worth fighting for; not considering that our lives and liberties were of very much consequence, and so they showed a resolution once more to attempt to overhaul us. this hesitation was much to our advantage, as it enabled us once more to load our guns up to the muzzle, and to take a steady aim as they came up. in all my fighting experience i have come to the conclusion that there is no system equal to that of waiting for a good opportunity, mustering all resources, and then, once having begun the attack, to continue at the work without relaxing a moment till the day is won. the moorish pirates did not follow this course. at last came the tug of war. their fury and thirst for vengeance was now added to their greed for plunder, and the boats ranged up on either side of the little "frolic" with seemingly a full determination on the part of their crews to overpower us at once. "steady, my good lads, steady!" shouted porpoise. "remember, fire as before, and then load again as fast as you can." off went our guns with good effect; while hearty and i, and three or four others, armed with muskets, blazed away with them, taking up one after the other as fast as the steward could load them. the report of the guns must have been heard on shore, and far out to sea over that calm water, while the bright flashes lighted up the midnight air. musket-balls and round-shot don't often fly about without doing some damage; and while ours were telling pretty well among the thickly crowded boats of the moors, we were not altogether free from harm. two of our people had been wounded. one of them fell to the deck, and, from the way the poor fellow groaned, i was much afraid that he was mortally hurt. i drew him close to the companion-hatch, that he might, in a slight degree, be protected from further injury; but we were too hard pressed to spare any one for a moment from the deck to take him below. hearty was passing close to me, when, by the flash of the guns, i saw him a give a sudden, convulsive movement with his left arm. i felt sure he was hit. i asked him. "oh, nothing, nothing," he answered. "don't say a word about it. i can fight away just as well as ever, and that is all i care about just now." one of our chief efforts was to prevent the moorish boats from hooking on to us. this they frequently attempted to do, and each time the lashings they tried to secure were cut adrift. i was indeed surprised to find them so pertinacious in their attack, for a resolute resistance at the commencement will generally compel those sort of gentry to give up an enterprise, unless they are certain a great deal is to be gained by it. the breeze was now increasing, and old snow stood at the helm, with his left hand on the tiller, and his right hand wielding a cutlass, with which, aided by another man, he kept at bay any of the moors who attempted to climb on board over the stern. still, so overmatched were we by numbers, that i felt even then, in spite of our determined resistance, that the result was very doubtful. i almost sickened at the thought; but i was very certain that, before such a sad consummation should occur, not a man of us would be left alive on the deck. "and then, should the day be evidently going against us, should no help remain--not a shadow of hope--would it be right to blow up the vessel, and preserve those innocent ones below from an ignominious slavery--from a worse than death?" "impious man," responded a voice within me, "think not to rule the providences of thy creator. do not evil that good may come of it. who can tell what means he has in store, even at the very last moment, to preserve those whom, in his infinite wisdom, he has resolved to preserve?" i felt the frailty of human thoughts and human intentions, and banished the terrible idea from my mind. still i could not feel but that our case, to outward appearance, was very desperate. porpoise himself was wounded, i found, though the pain he suffered did not allow him for a moment to relax in his defence of the vessel. his voice was heard everywhere as loud and cheering as before, encouraging our crew to persevere. once more the pirates drew off. "huzza, huzza!" shouted all hands; "they have had enough of it." but no. "load your guns, load your guns?" shouted porpoise. "don't trust to them." it was fortunate this was done. with terrific cries and yells they for a third time gave way towards us, completely hemming us in, so that some boats going ahead almost stopped the vessel's way through the water. keeping up their hideous yells, firing their pistols, and flourishing their scymitars, they flung themselves headlong on board. many were driven back, but their places were speedily filled by others. the physical power of the cutter's crew, exerted so long to the utmost stretch, was almost failing, when, far in the offing, to the northward, the bright flash of a gun was seen, followed shortly afterwards by another and another. i pointed them out to hearty. "there's help coming, my lads!" he shouted. "never fear; but let's have all the glory of the fight to ourselves, and drive these scoundrels off before it arrives. huzza, huzza! back with them! no quarter! cut them down! drive them into the sea?" all this time he was most completely suiting the action to his words. at last some of the pirates saw the flashes. the morning light was just breaking in the east, for the action had endured far longer than it has taken to describe it. they must have suspected that they foreboded no good to them, and that the sooner they were off the better. orders were shouted out by the chiefs. those who could obeyed them, and, leaping back, the boats in a body shoved off from us; but some unfortunate wretches were still clinging to our bulwarks. they fought as they clung with all the fanaticism of mohammedans; but our seamen made quick work of them, and in less than two minutes not one was left alive. the grey light of dawn showed us the dark boats pulling in-shore, and as the sun arose its early beams lighted up the canvas of a man-of-war brig, close-hauled, laying up towards us. our people shouted lustily when they saw her; and hearty, forgetting his wound and his begrimed and war-stained appearance, hurried below to assure his charges of their safety. we quickly recognised the "zebra," and were not long in getting within hail of her, when rullock, accompanied by bubble, came on board of us, to inquire into the particulars of our adventure. old rullock at first was somewhat inclined to be angry with us for getting so close in-shore, and will almost pulled his hair off in his vexation that he had not been with us to share in the honours of the fight and defence. our loss had been serious; the poor fellow who had been the first wounded had died just before sunrise, and the surgeon of the brig pronounced the other cases to be somewhat bad. porpoise's was a flesh-wound--the advantage, as he observed, of being a fat man; but he forgot that if he had not been fat he might not have been wounded at all. hearty, though he made light of his hurt, was very much injured; and the surgeon, with a somewhat significant look, advised him to get on shore as fast as he could, and to get carefully nursed for a time. "you'll have no great difficulty to get some one to nurse you," he remarked. i really believe that he did not think so badly of the case as he pretended. be that as it may, we made the best of our way to malta harbour, where we all took up our abode on shore, while the cutter was undergoing some necessary repairs. the brig also requiring repairs, rullock took lodgings, and in the most considerate way had hearty conveyed to them, and invited his sister and niece to stay with him--a very indelicate proceeding, i dare say; but the jolly old sailor observed, "who was so fit to look after a wounded man as the girl he was going to marry, and in whose defence he was wounded? a fig for all such rigmarole prudisms, say i." as the parties concerned did not disagree with him, so the matter was arranged to the satisfaction of everybody. chapter twenty five. the bachelors at sea--the ionian islands--return to malta--sad news-homeward-bound--horrible suspicions--the pirate's handiwork--a burning ship--traces of our friends--the rescue--the bachelors become benedicts, and thus terminates in the most satisfactory manner imaginable the cruise of the "frolic." it took nearly two months before hearty recovered even partially from his wound; and at the end of that time, the "frolic" being ready for sea, the surgeons insisted that to re-establish his health he must take a trip away for a few weeks in her. this proceeding became somewhat more necessary, as the "zebra" had been ordered off to the levant, and he could not well remain the guest of mrs mizen during captain rullock's absence. among the lovely isles of greece, then, it was resolved we would take a cruise. both carstairs and bubble joined us: the former, in his usual way, had been carrying on with mrs skyscraper; but the widow had been unable to hook him firmly; indeed, as bubble observed, he was somewhat a big fish to haul on shore. he, on his part, also, could not tell whether the lady cared for him or not. in my opinion she did, but could not quite make up her mind to lose her liberty. once more we five jolly bachelors were afloat together, on our passage to greece. hearty was in fair spirits. the fresh air after the confinement of a sick-room, raised them, in spite of himself; indeed, considering that he was certain of laura's affection, and hoped in a few months to be united to her, though parted from her for a brief space, he had no reason to be melancholy. we had a fine run to the eastward. what words can describe the picturesque beauties of corfu and the albanian coast--the classic associations of athens and the varied forms of the isles and islets scattered over the aegean sea! bubble and i revelled in them; but it must be owned that carstairs, and even hearty, thought more of the wild fowl and snipes and woodcocks to be shot in the marshy valleys or thyme-covered heights, than of their pictorial effects, or classic association. whenever we were at sea our people kept a very sharp look-out for sandgate's polacca-brig, in the hopes that she might be cruising in those parts. after, however, the various pranks he had played in the mediterranean, i suspected that he would have shifted the scene of his exploits to some other part of the globe. greece and her islands, lovely and interesting as they are, have been so often described by more graphic pens than mine, that i do not think my readers would thank me for filling my pages with an account of what we saw. we had not much personal communication with the ionians. what we saw and what we heard of them did not raise them especially in our estimation. however, what could be expected of a race so long under the dominion of venice, during the worst times of her always nefarious system of policy? by the venetian system discord was fermented among all the states subject to turkish rule, and miscreants of all classes who could help to effect that object were protected and supported. crime was thus openly encouraged; the assassin who had committed ten murders was only sent to the galleys for the same number of years; and any one speaking disrespectfully of any person high in office was actually punished with the infliction of a like sentence. the young men of the noble families were brought up in italy, and while they learned all her vices, were taught to despise their native land, and to forget their mother-tongue. falsehood, revenge, a foolish vanity, a love of political intrigue, were but some of their most glaring vices; justice was openly sold; public faith was unknown; their peasants were grossly ignorant; their nobles were without honour; and their merchants were destitute of integrity; while their priests were generally illiterate and immoral in the extreme. _heu mihi_! a pretty picture of a people. well, i fancy they have improved somewhat under british protection; and when i was among them i do not believe they were so bad as all that. still they were in an unsatisfactory state, and a very difficult people to govern. they may have improved still more now; and i hope they have. we sailed about from island to island, and visited them all in their turn. first we went to that of the ancient teleboans; once conquered by king cephalus, who gave it his name, and whose descendants for many generations reigned over them--so bubble informed us; and we were not a little interested in visiting various cyclopic remains, and among them those of the ancient city of cranii. the island is very rugged and mountainous; the highest mountain, that of montagna negra, being upwards of three thousand feet above the level of the sea. we spent a couple of days also at the handsome city of zante, the capital of the island of that name, famous for the longevity of its inhabitants, and its currants, oil, wine, and fragrant honey. santa maura, once known as leucadia, was our next resort. little cared we for its classical recollections, but far more interested were we in visiting the tomb of the gallant clarke, who fell under the walls of its fortress, which was attacked by the english in 1810, under general oswald. the island is separated from the main land by a narrow channel. there is a curious natural mole running out from the island, which has exactly the appearance of being the work of art. we all anticipated much pleasure in visiting ithaca, the birth-place and patrimony of ulysses; but when we got there none of us felt inclined to envy him his rugged, inhospitable-looking territory, and were not surprised that he was anxious to get a footing in a more fruitful portion of the globe. still it is a very romantic and picturesque spot; and produces the vine, orange, lemon, and other fruits in abundance. pasco also we saw, once noted as a retreat for pirates, and cerigo and cerigotto; and thus, having made the tour of the septinsular republic, we sailed back to malta, with the anticipation of a hearty welcome from the friends we had left behind there. how glittering white looked the houses of the city! how blue the water, how gay the caps and sashes and jackets of the boatmen as they pulled about in their fancifully painted boats, and came vociferating alongside as we beat up the harbour of valetta, and dropped our anchor not far from the landing-place. we all of us hastened on shore; hearty to see his betrothed, and i to take care of him; carstairs to throw himself at the feet of mrs skyscraper; bubble, as he himself said, to see that no one got into mischief; and porpoise to order certain stores for the cutter. hearty and i walked up at once to mrs mizen's lodgings. he knocked hurriedly at the door. perhaps some of my readers know how a man feels under similar circumstances--i don't. an italian servant appeared, a stranger. "que vuole, signori?" he asked. "are mrs or miss mizen at home?" inquired hearty, in an agitated voice, not heeding the man's question. "do you understand me? an english lady and her daughter?" "oh, capisco, capisco!" answered the italian, running away up stairs. i thought he was going to announce our arrival; but he speedily returned holding a letter. i saw that the address was in a lady's handwriting as he delivered it to hearty. hearty opened it with a trembling hand. his countenance assumed a look of blank disappointment as he read its contents. as soon as he had glanced hurriedly through it, he began and read it over again; and then as he held it in his hand his eye still rested on it. "what has occurred, my dear fellow?" i asked, anxiously. i must confess--and oh! my fair readers! don't be angry with me, an old bachelor--i did truly suspect that it was the old story, and that the fair laura had for some reason or other thought better of it; that she had heard something against her intended's character, and believed it; or that sir lloyd snowdon, or somebody else, whose metal was more attractive, had stepped in and cut him out. i say these ideas glanced through my mind. they were very wrong and very disparaging to the sex, and most unjustifiable, and i was quite angry with myself for entertaining them, but i had seen so much that was bad in the world that they came in spite of me--i crave for pardon. i had also seen much that was good, and noble, and excellent; examples of the most devoted, self-sacrificing, all-enduring affection, and i ought at once to have remembered those examples and balanced them against all my evil suspicions. i did not, however, at that time; so i waited with no small amount of anxiety for hearty's answer. "they are gone," he replied; "gone away to england." then my suspicions are correct, i thought. "it is a very sad case, i fear. soon after we sailed, mrs mizen received notice of tom mizen's illness, and the next post brought out such alarming accounts that she and her daughter resolved at once to return home. a fine fast-sailing merchant-brig, the `success,' was on the point of sailing, so, as a journey by land through italy and france would be injurious to laura, they determined to go by her. what was their surprise on going on board to find the other berths occupied by mrs seton and her daughter, and mrs skyscraper, who, for some business matters connected with property left them, had to go england. miss mizen wrote as they were on the point of sailing, and the people of the house took charge of the letter to deliver to me. she speaks in favourable terms of the brig and of the master, captain hutchins, so i trust that they may have a good passage home. but it is disappointing. you'll not mind, my dear fellow, sailing at once to follow them? i am afraid there is no chance of catching them at gibraltar, but if the `frolic' behaves as well as usual, we may get to england almost as soon as they do. not that i wish that either--i would far rather the `success' had a speedy passage. i am certain also carstairs will be ready to start; and as for bubble, he'll wish to do what is reasonable; so i suppose there is nothing to prevent our sailing as soon as we have got a fresh supply of water, and a few more provisions on board." i assured my friend that i was perfectly ready to go to sea that very hour, if the necessary preparations for the voyage could be made; and volunteered at once to go in search of porpoise, to hasten what was required to be done; while he himself went to his bankers, and settled a few bills he had left unpaid. on my way i encountered carstairs, who had received no notice of the widow's departure, and was therefore still engaged in searching for her, as much puzzled as hearty had at first been. i never saw a fellow more taken aback than he was when i communicated the truth to him, and he directly became all eagerness to put to sea. what his feelings were i cannot exactly tell. i suspect that his confidence in the durability of mrs skyscraper's regard for him was not quite up to the mark of hearty's for that of his intended. "why hasn't she written to me, to tell me what she was going to do, and why has she hurried away to england? hang it, they are all alike, i suppose, and delight to make fools of us poor men. now let us go and hunt up porpoise. bubble said he should tend to him while i was paying my visit to my--my--hang it, to the widow, i mean." poor fellow, he was sadly put out i saw. porpoise was soon found; and when he heard the state of the case, he set to work as if life and death depended on it, in getting the cutter ready for a long voyage. he had plenty of lieutenants in us three gentlemen; and while one went off in one direction another started away in an opposite one to order what was required, and to see the orders executed, while the crew did their part with right good will. water and coals, and stores and provisions, were soon alongside, and quickly hoisted on board and stowed away below. hearty was surprised and highly gratified when he got on board and found what was done. "where there's a will there's a way," is a very true saying; and "if you want a thing done, go and do it yourself," is another. the portuguese say, "if you want a thing _go_, if you don't want a thing _send_." that very evening, with a fair wind, we were running out of malta harbour. away glided the "frolic" over the moonlit mediterranean, with every stitch of canvas she could carry set alow and aloft. we had a sharp look-out kept ahead so that we might avoid running down any boat, or running into any vessel; while the three landsmen agreed to keep watch with porpoise and me, to add to the number of hands on deck. porpoise prognosticated a very rapid passage home, and certainly, from the way we commenced it, we had reason to hope that he would not prove a fallacious seer. we speedily lost sight of malta, and its rocks and fortifications; with its scanty soil and swarthy population, and noisy bells, and lazy monks, without any very great regret on our part. we had altogether passed a pleasant, and not unexciting time there; and i, for my part, look back to those days with fewer regrets as to the way i spent them than i do to some passed in other places. i am somewhat inclined to moralise. i must own that often and often i wish that i could live my early days over again, that i might employ them very differently to what i did. deeply do i regret the precious time squandered in perfect idleness, or the most puerile frivolities, if not in absolute wickedness; time which might have been spent in acquiring knowledge which would have afforded the most intense and pure delight in benefiting my fellow-creatures; which would have assuredly afforded me happiness and peace of mind in the consciousness that i was doing my duty. but ah! time has gone by never to be recalled; but happily it may be redeemed while health and strength and vigour of mind remain. often have i thought to myself, "why was i sent into the world? why was i endued with an intellect--with a heart to feel--a soul to meditate on things great and glorious--with powers of mind which i am conscious are but in embryo, and which but await separation from this frail body to comprehend some, if not all, the great mysteries of nature! surely i was not placed here merely to kill time--to amuse myself--to employ my faculties in trifles; still less, to indulge myself in mere animal gratification. no, no; i am certain of that. i was sent here as a place of trial--as a school where i might learn my duties--as a preparation for a higher sphere." when i understood this, the great problem of existence was at once solved; difficulties vanished; the whole government of the world at once seemed right and just and reasonable; and my thoughts, feelings, tastes, and aspirations became changed. i was led to look upward as to the only source of happiness, and a pure and unfailing source it has ever since proved to me. brother yachtsmen who may glance your eye over these pages, meditate seriously on this matter. as you walk the deck on your midnight watch, looking up ever and anon into the dark sky where flit countless numbers of brilliant stars to guide you on your path across the ocean, ask yourself the question, "why was i sent into this world?" and do not be satisfied till you have found an answer, and resolved to profit by it. i do not pretend that i thought much about this matter when i was on board the "frolic," yet now and again some thoughts of the sort did flash across my mind, but my companions rallied me on my seriousness and they vanished. but to my history: away sailed the saucy little "frolic" over the blue waters of the mediterranean. we laughed and sang and chatted, much as usual, and carstairs quoted to as good effect as in days of yore; but we failed entirely in our long stories, for our pens had been idle, and our imaginations were much at fault. what we might have done i do not know, had not a reality occurred which effectually put all fiction to flight. we were about half-way between malta and gibraltar, a succession of light winds having made old snow confess that he was afraid his prognostications of a rapid passage were not likely to be realised, when one forenoon when i came on deck, i found porpoise scrutinising through his glass an object which he had discovered on the water nearly right ahead of us. "what is it, do you think?" i asked. "i can't quite make out," he answered, handing me the telescope. "it looks to me like the hull of a dismasted ship--an ugly thing to run foul of on a dark night with a heavy gale blowing." "you are right as to its being a ship's hull, i am pretty certain," i answered. "we shall be up to it soon, and that will settle the question." some of the people, however, declared that what we saw was a rock or an island, and others that a dead whale had floated in through the straits. as we approached, however, our opinion was found to be the correct one, and then it became a subject of discussion as to what she could be. "she is a good-sized craft, whatever she is," observed hearty, who had joined us on deck. "is she an english or foreign vessel do you think?" "english by her build," replied porpoise, observing her narrowly through the glass; "i cannot make it out. i see no one on board. how she came into that state puzzles me." "my dear fellow, have you any idea what sort of a vessel the `success' is? does any one on board know her?" exclaimed hearty, suddenly turning pale, and literally trembling from head to foot, as all sorts of horrible suspicions and fears flashed through his mind. inquiries were made, but no one recollected to have seen the brig in which our friends had taken their passage. we did our best to calm hearty's apprehensions, but under the circumstances they were very natural, and in spite of all we could say, they rather increased than diminished, as we approached the wreck. carstairs shared them, but, being of a far less excitable temperament, in a much less degree; indeed, hearty seemed to look on him as being very callous and insensible, for not making himself as miserable as he felt. the breeze was very light, and our progress seemed terribly slow to the impatient feelings of our kind-hearted host. his glass was never for a moment off the wreck; indeed we were all of us constantly looking at her, in the hopes of seeing some one appear. the afternoon was drawing well on, before we got up to her. the instant we approached her, two boats were lowered, and hearty and i jumped into the first, and away we pulled as fast as the men could bend to their oars--the men evidently entering fully into the feelings of their master. i went with him that i might really look after him, should his worst anticipations be realised. we were soon alongside, and in an instant scrambled on board. the masts, and rigging, and sails, hung over the side; the former in their fall having carried away the bulwarks and smashed the boats. i saw before we got on board, that she had lost her masts with all sail set, in some unaccountably lubberly way it seemed. the sea had washed away some of her spare spars and the caboose, but she had apparently righted directly her masts went, and there seemed no reason why she should have been deserted by her crew. as we pulled up under the stern, we looked out for a name painted there, but a sail hung over it, and if there was a name it was not perceptible. hearty, the moment he was on board, rushed with frantic haste along the deck, to ascertain the important fact, and very nearly fell overboard in his attempt to remove the sail, till others could aid him. the sail was soon dragged aside, and as we hung down over the taffrail, a large s appeared, there could be no doubt of it. there was the word "success" of london. i had to help my friend on board again. "what can have happened! what can have happened!" he exclaimed, as soon as he could find words to speak. "why, i trust that they fancied the brig in a much worse condition than she appears to us to be, and that they quitted her in the boats, or some other craft which was fortunately passing soon after the catastrophe." but as i spoke, our eyes fell on the shattered boats, and i recollected that the former hypothesis could not be correct. "they must have fallen in with some vessel," i remarked to hearty. "the ladies were happily conveyed on board her, but why the crew deserted the ship i cannot say." "but where can they have gone to--what port can they have put into--what sort of vessel can they be on board?" exclaimed hearty, almost frantic with agitation. "it's very dreadful." by this time the other boat had got alongside, with carstairs, bubble, and porpoise in her. together we commenced a search over the deserted vessel. the appearance of the cabin again raised our doubts as to the reason of the desertion. the ladies had evidently been at work just before the catastrophe. their work-baskets were on the floor, with their work, in which needles were sticking; and needle-cases, thimbles, and reels of cotton, skeins of silk and worsted, and similar articles, were strewed about. as i looked more minutely into the state of affairs, i observed that every thing of value had been carried off; not a silver spoon or fork, not a piece of plate of any description remained. the ladies' jewels were all gone. this was what was to be expected, but i was also certain that they would not leave their daily work behind. i did not increase hearty's apprehensions by pointing this out to him. carstairs all the time, though he took matters in a very different way, seemed to be much alarmed and anxious. i saw the chronometer, sextants, charts, compasses, and every thing in the captain's cabin had been carried off. the ship's log and manifest could nowhere be found, nor indeed could any of her papers. from the cabin we went to the hold, and there also the cargo had evidently been disturbed, and i judged that a considerable quantity had been carried away; a few bales of silk and velvet only remaining. this was a very suspicious circumstance. still, had there been time to remove any thing, the captain would of course have carried away what was likely to be of most value. the forepeak was next searched. the seamen's chests had been broken open, and the contents of many of them were strewed about--why the men did not use their keys was surprising. still, in their hurry they might not have had time to find them. hearty went about looking into every hole, and making his observations on all he saw. he had collected every thing belonging to the ladies as treasured relics, and had them packed and conveyed on board the "frolic," while carstairs took charge of all mrs skyscraper's property, and sighed over it with a look of despair, and we were about to quit the vessel, when one of the men declared that he heard a voice proceeding from the fore-hold. forward we all went again. certainly there was a groan. guided by the sound, and by removing some of the cargo, we arrived at a space where lay a human being. we lifted him up, and carried him out of the dark noisome hole, and the fresh air speedily revived him. at first his startled look showed that he did not know what to make of us, but by degrees he recovered his senses, though his first words increased our apprehensions. "what! are you come back again? don't murder me!--don't murder me!" he exclaimed, with a look of terror. "murder you, mate! what should put that into your head?" asked one of our men who was supporting him. by pouring a little brandy and water down his throat, he in a short time recovered altogether. he told us that he had been the cook of the brig. he was an old man, and almost worn out, and that this was to have been his last voyage. "well, gentlemen," he continued, "when i see a number of young ladies come on board, and their mothers to look after them, and no parson to make davy jones angered like, which he always is when any on 'em gets afloat, says i to myself, we shall have a fine run of it home, and the chances are that the `success' will make a finer passage than she ever did before. well, we hadn't been two days at sea before we falls in with a polacca-brig, which speaks us quite civil like, and a man aboard, though he was rigged like a greek, asks us in decent real english, quite civil like, what passengers we'd got aboard. so, thinking no harm, we told him, and he answered `that he'd keep us company, and protect us, for that to his knowledge there was a notorious pirate cruising thereabouts, and that if he fell in with us he might do us an injury.' the captain did not seem much to like our new friend, and would rather have been without his company, but as he sailed two knots to our one, we couldn't help ourselves, do ye see. for two days or more he kept close to us, and then it fell almost to a calm, and what does he do, but quietly range up alongside with the help of some sweeps he had, and before we knew where we were, he had thrown some two-score or more of cut-throats aboard of us, who knocked some of our crew down, drove others overboard, and very soon got possession of the brig. i was ill below, but i popped my head up to see what was happening, and when i found how things were going, thinks i to myself, the best thing i can do is to be quiet; if they cut my throat, they may as well do it while i'm comfortably in bed as struggling away on deck. instead, however, of turning into my berth again, i thought that i'd just go and stow myself away in the hold under the cargo, where they wouldn't be likely to look for me, so there i went, and there i've been ever since. i felt the ship some time afterwards thrown on her beam-ends, and thought she'd be going down, but she very soon righted. i felt the masts shaken out of her, but i could not tell what else had happened. i tried to get out to see, but the cargo had shifted and jammed me in so tight that i couldn't break my way out. i suppose i should have died if you hadn't come to help me, gentlemen." "but can you not tell what became of the passengers and crew?" exclaimed hearty, interrupting him. "no more than the babe unborn, sir," answered the old man; "i suppose they were all carried aboard the pirate. from what i know of some of our crew, i don't think they would have much minded joining the villains, and several i myself saw killed and hove overboard." this fearful information gave us still more concern than we had felt from what we had already discovered. there was some cause for hope before, now there was none. there was no doubt whatever that our friends had fallen into the power of the villain miles sandgate. grown desperate, it was impossible to say to what extremes he might not venture to go. still i had less apprehension for the fate of mrs and miss mizen than for that of jane seton. it could scarcely be expected that he would again let her out of his power. i was offering what consolation i could to hearty as well as to carstairs on these grounds, in which i was joined by bubble, whose heart was overflowing with commiseration for them and those they were so deeply interested in, when hearty suddenly exclaimed,-"but, my dear fellow, is it not possible that the same squall which struck this vessel and reduced her to a wreck may have struck the pirate, and sent her and all on board to the bottom? or can you answer me that this is not possible? still it may have preserved them from a worse fate. oh, horrible, horrible!" "i do not think it is probable that people so thoroughly acquainted with these seas should not have been forewarned in time to guard against even the most sudden squall. there are always some indications; only those who do not regard them are the sufferers. just as likely after he had rifled the brig, sandgate (for i doubt not that he is the culprit) may have put the passengers on shore somewhere or other, and made some plausible excuse for having taken them on board his vessel. i think, in truth, that for the sake of making friends at court, he is much more likely to have treated them with perfect civility than to have ventured in any way to insult or injure them." all the time i was trying to persuade myself that i was speaking what i thought; but i must own that i had very serious apprehensions for their safety. there was no object in remaining longer on board the wreck. to prevent any vessels running into her, for that night at all events, we secured a large lantern with a burner full of oil to the stump of the mainmast. we were very unwilling to quit her, but we could not venture to leave anybody on board to look after her till we could despatch a vessel to bring her into gibraltar, lest before this could be done a gale might spring up, and she might founder. so, taking tom pancake, the old man we had found, on board with us, we returned to the cutter. we forthwith held a council of war, when it was resolved to steer a direct course for gibraltar, that we might then get vessels sent out in all directions to look for the daring pirate. i never saw any one suffer so much as did hearty. a few nights of the anxiety he was now doomed to suffer would, i feared much, not only turn his head grey, but completely prostrate him. carstairs suffered a good deal, but his regard for mrs skyscraper was of a very different character to the deep affection hearty entertained for miss mizen; and if he was to lose her, i suspected that he would have no great difficulty in supplying her place as the queen of his affections. no sooner had we left the unfortunate ship, than a fresh breeze had sprung up, and before sunset we had run her completely out of sight. for all the first part of the night the breeze lasted, and we made good way on our course for gibraltar. for a long time poor hearty would not turn in; but at last i persuaded him to lie down and take some of that rest which he so much required. i also went below, but i was restless, and just as the middle watch was set, i returned on deck. porpoise and bubble were there. i found them watching a bright glare which appeared in the sky. i considered a moment our whereabouts. "that must be from a ship on fire," i exclaimed. "there is no doubt about it," replied porpoise. "she has been blazing away for the last hour or more, i fear, for all that time i have observed that ruddy glow in the sky. i hope we may be in time to render some assistance to the unfortunate crew." the wind freshened even still more as we advanced towards the burning ship, but not enough for our impatience. hearty and carstairs were called, and when they came on deck they exhibited equal eagerness with the rest of us; indeed, hearty seemed for a time almost to forget his own anxiety in his zeal in the cause of humanity. surely we seldom know even our most intimate friends without seeing them tried under a variety of circumstances. sometimes i must own that i have been sadly disappointed in them; at other times i have been as agreeably surprised by the exhibition of self-denial, courage, warmth of heart, and judgment, which i did not believe to exist in them. such was the case with my friend hearty. we got the boats ready to lower the instant we should be close enough to the vessel. the interval which elapsed before we drew up to her was one of great anxiety. all sorts of ideas and fears crossed our minds, and at all events we felt that many of our fellow-creatures might be perishing for want of our assistance. through our glasses, as we drew on, we discovered that the greater part of the vessel was enveloped in flames; the poop alone was not entirely consumed, though the devouring element had made such progress that the people were already seeking for a momentary safety by hanging on to the taffrail quarters. "stand by to shorten sail!" sang out porpoise. the square-sail and gaff and square-topsail were taken in, and the foresail being hauled up to windward, and the jib-sheets let fly, the cutter was hove-to and a boat instantly lowered. as before, hearty and i went in her, while the other gig immediately followed us. our appearance took the poor wretches by surprise, as from the darkness of night our approach had not been perceived. they raised a cry to implore us to hasten to their assistance. our men shouted in return. they needed no cry to urge them to exertion. by the bright glare of the flames we saw that the men clinging to the wreck were by their costume greeks, while the hull itself had a foreign appearance. the vessel was a brig, we observed. the foremast had already fallen, the flames were twisting and twining in serpentine forms along the yards and up to the very maintop-gallant masthead. some, as i said, were still clinging to the wreck, others had leaped overboard, and were hanging on to spars and oars and gratings, and a few were in a boat floating near the vessel; but she appeared to be stove in, and to have no oars or other means of progression. with all these people, blinded with terror and eager to save their lives, it was necessary to use much precaution to prevent ourselves from being swamped by too many leaping on board at a time. the first thing was to rescue those who were in the most imminent danger of being burned. while we pulled under the stern, and as the people dropped into the water picked them up, the other boat hauled those on board who were already floating, and seemed most to require help. we had got most of the people off the burning wreck, but two still hung on to the burning taffrail, and seemed unwilling to trust themselves in the sea. "never fear, jump, jump, my lads!" sung out our men; then turning to the greeks whom they had saved, added, "tell them to jump in your own lingo; they don't understand us." the greeks said something about "inglesi," but i did not understand what they meant. at last, however, the flames rushing out from the stern ports and along the deck, gave them no alternative, and they had to throw themselves into the water, whence we quickly picked them out, and with a boat loaded almost to sinking, returned on board the cutter. i was especially struck by the appearance of the two men last saved. certainly they were much more like englishmen than greeks. no sooner, however, did the old man we had saved from the "success" see them than he exclaimed, "what mates! is that you? how did you get aboard there? why, as i live, that craft must be the greek pirate which plundered us, and carried off the ladies." the worst suspicions which had been floating through my mind were confirmed by these remarks. poor hearty seemed thunderstruck. carstairs had not yet returned. the men could not deny their identity, and they instantly began to offer excuses for having been on board the greek. "never mind that!" exclaimed hearty. "tell me, my men, where are the ladies? what has become of them? help us to find them, and all will be overlooked. they could not have been left to perish on board the burning vessel." "we can't say much about it, sir," answered one of the men, who seemed to be the most intelligent. "we were forward when the fire broke out, and it was with great difficulty that we managed to crawl aft. when we got there we found that a raft had been built and lowered into the water, and that the boats had been got out, and that several people were in them. some got away, and we don't know where they went, but we towed two of them after us. one was swamped and went down, and the other, as you saw, was stove in. what became of the other two we don't know; we believe that the ladies were in them, but we can't say for certain; all we know is, that we did not see them on the deck, or in either of the other two boats, when we got aft; still we believe that nearly half the people on board, in one way or another, have been lost." then, supposing the seaman spoke the truth, there was still hope; but how dreadful at the best must be the condition of our friends, exposed in open boats with the most lawless of companions! while we were still examining the men, carstairs and the rest returned on board. he had also with him one of the crew of the "success," who, on being examined, corroborated the statement of the other two. the character of the men whose lives we had preserved was now clear; but, wretches as they were, and deserving of the heaviest punishment, we could not have avoided saving them from drowning, even had we known the worst at first. scarcely were they all on board before every portion of the burning vessel was enveloped in flames. porpoise all the time was fortunately not forgetful of the safety of the cutter, and, having let draw the foresail, we had been standing away from her. suddenly there was a fiercer blaze than before--a loud, deafening report was heard, the remaining mast and deck lifted, the former shooting up into the air like a sky-rocket surrounded by burning brands, and then down again came the whole fiery mass, covering us, even at the distance we were, with burning fragments of wreck, and then all was darkness, and not a remnant of the polacca-brig remained together above water. after the character we had heard of the rescued crew, without giving them any warning, we suddenly seized them, and, lashing their arms behind them and their legs together, made them sit down in a row under the bulwarks. they seemed to be very much surprised at the treatment, but we did not understand their expostulations, and should not have listened to them if we had. we, however, served out provisions to them, and they very soon seemed reconciled to their fate. the three english seamen vowed that they had been kept on board the brig by force, and, as we would fain have believed this is to be the case, we did not treat them as prisoners, though we kept a very sharp eye on their movements; so, especially, did old pancake, who appeared to have no little dread lest they should play him some scurvy trick in return for his having betrayed them. these arrangements were very quickly made. the most important consideration, however, was the best method to pursue in order to discover what had become of the raft reported to have been made, and the missing boat. unless by those who have been placed in a similar situation, the nervous anxiety and excitement which almost overcame every one of us would be difficult to be conceived. hearty thought of sending the boats away to range in circles round the spot, in the chance of falling in with the raft or boat; but porpoise overruled this proposal by assuring him that the raft could only have gone to leeward, and that the boat probably would be found in the same direction. keeping, therefore, a bright lookout, with a light at our masthead, we kept tacking backwards and forwards so as to sweep over every foot of the ground to leeward of the spot where the fire first burst out. we had hinted to the english seamen taken from the pirate that their future prospects depended very much on the success which might attend our search. they accordingly gave us all the information and assistance in their power, by showing us how the pirate had steered from the moment the fire was discovered, and how far she had gone after her captain had placed the ladies on the raft. nothing could we discover during the night. hearty was in despair; so was carstairs; only he was rather inclined to be savage than pathetic in his misery. daylight came; as the dawn drew on nothing could be seen but the clear grey water surrounding us. then, just as we had gone about and were standing once more to the westward, the sun rose from his ocean bed, his beams glancing on a small object seen far away on our port bow. "huzza! huzza!" shouted bubble, who was the first to bring his glass to bear on it. "some people on a raft! there is no doubt on the subject. white dresses, too! it may be the ladies! it must be! oh, it can't be otherwise! keep up your spirits, hearty, my dear fellow; all will go well! it will, carstairs, i tell you! don't be cast down any more! i think i see them waving!" thus the worthy bubble ran on, giving way to the exuberance of his feelings and sympathy for his friends. every yard of canvas the cutter could carry was pressed on her, and each moment rapidly decreased our distance from the raft; for that a raft it was, or a piece of a wreck, there could be no doubt. our telescopes were kept unchangeably fixed on it. it was with no little apprehension, however, as we drew nearer, that i perceived that there were but three persons on it. one was standing up; the other two were seated on benches, or chests, or something of the same size, secured to the raft. the figure standing up was that of a man in the greek costume; the other two were females. i had little doubt in my own mind who they were. as we got still nearer i fancied that, under the greek cap, i could distinguish the features of miles sandgate. the features of the ladies were more difficult to make out, but i heard hearty exclaim, "yes, it is her--it is her!" meaning miss mizen; and i felt sure he was right. but who was the other person? the figure was not like that of either mrs mizen or mrs seton, but whether it was jane seton or mrs skyscraper was the question. poor carstairs, he must have felt that, in all probability, it was miss seton. what would sandgate do when he found himself thus completely brought to bay? it was a serious question, for he had the two ladies entirely in his power, and, had he chosen, might, holding them as hostages, make any terms with us he pleased. i saw him watching the approaching cutter. he must have recognised her as soon as she hove in sight. yet he did not quail, but stood up boldly confronting us. then he seemed to be addressing one of the ladies. i looked again; i was certain she was jane seton; and i clearly recognised miss mizen. jane had given her hand to laura. the pirate seemed to be urging her to fulfil some request; he half knelt before her with uplifted hands; then he sprang up, with a look of bitter reproach. by this time the cutter was close up to the raft, and a boat was on the point of being lowered. again, with an imploring gesture, the pirate urged his suit. miss seton shook her head. he seized her hand. she struggled violently. it appeared that, in his rage, he was about to drag her into the water. he would have succeeded, had not miss mizen held her hand and drawn her back. hearty and bubble were in the boat pulling rapidly to the raft. the pirate let go miss seton's hand, and drew himself up to his full height; he seemed to be uttering some strong reproaches. the bows of the boat were almost touching the raft, the oars were thrown in. at that moment the pirate, uttering a fearful cry (and if ever i heard the cry of a madman that was one), turned round, and plunged headlong into the water. down, down, he sank! scarcely an eddy marked where he had sprung in, with such determination had he endeavoured to reach the bottom. i watched for him, but he never rose again. such was the dreadful end of miles sandgate. the next moment hearty was on the raft, and had clasped laura mizen in his arms, while miss seton was borne fainting into the boat by bubble. they were quickly conveyed on board, while the raft and its freight were allowed to go adrift. the two young ladies were immediately carried to the cabin, where laura rapidly described to hearty all that had occurred. poor miss seton, however, required their whole attention, and for the moment drew them off from all thoughts about themselves. not that miss mizen for a moment forgot her mother and her other companions, and it was a relief to us all to find that she had seen them placed in the first boat which had left the vessel just before they had been carried by sandgate to the raft. he intended, it seemed, to have taken possession of one of the other boats, and when she was swamped he managed to get on the raft, and clear away from the burning vessel before any one else reached it, while he left the rest of his companions in crime to perish without an attempt to afford them aid. the general opinion was that the boat would be steered to the southward, for the purpose of making the moorish coast, where the pirates fancied that they might find protection. "the chances are that they will all get murdered if they reach it," observed porpoise; "but we must try and catch them up before they get there." fortunately we had the whole day before us. all sail was again made on the cutter; the sun rose high in the heavens; tolerably hot came down its beams on our heads. at noon a meridional observation was taken, and just as we were shutting up our sextants, bubble, who was keeping a sharp lookout on every side, sang out that he saw a speck on the water almost ahead of us. i went immediately with my glass aloft. after waiting a little time i made out distinctly that the speck was a boat. as we drew on we made out that the boat was strongly manned, and that the people in her were doing their utmost to keep ahead of us. they could not have known what the "frolic" was made of to suppose that they had a chance of escaping. the breeze freshened. hard as they were pulling, hand over hand we came up with them. there were women in the boat, or we should have sent a shot after her to stop her way; we ran a gun out to frighten them. on we stood; the women in the boat now first observed us. "oh, help us! help us! help us!" they shrieked out. we required no summoning, however. there were three ladies, we saw, the number we expected to find. we soon ran up alongside the boat, though it required nice steering not to sink her. our earnest hopes and wishes were realised. in the stern-sheets sat mrs mizen and mrs seton, and, to the very great relief of poor carstairs, the fair mrs skyscraper. the pirates saw that they had not a prospect of escape, so they threw in their oars, and quietly allowed us to get alongside them, and to hook on their boat to us. i need not describe the joy of the two mothers at finding their daughters safe, or that of the daughters at seeing their mothers; nor will i do more than touch on the effect which the risk she had endured, and the satisfaction carstairs displayed at having her restored to him, worked on the heart of the widow. we very soon got to gibraltar, where we at once landed our very troublesome prisoners. mrs mizen had written to england to desire that letters might be sent to meet her there. in a day or so they arrived, and they gave so favourable an account of her son's health that as there was no necessity for her hurrying home, she was able to wait till we were at liberty to accompany her, having given our evidence against the pirates. several of them suffered, as the papers say, the extreme penalty of the law, and it was certainly a pity, for the sake of justice, that miles sandgate had not been alive to keep them company. at length we all reached england, and not long afterwards i had the satisfaction of seeing my friend edward hearty united to miss laura mizen, and the next week was called away to act as best-man to captain carstairs on his marriage with the fair relict of the late lieutenant skyscraper, of the rifle brigade. poor miss seton suffered much from the severe trial she had gone through. it was, i rejoice to say, not without good effects, and i had the opportunity of observing a great improvement in her character. some years passed by, during which she remained single, but on the death of her mother she became the wife of sir lloyd snowdon; and, living constantly on his estate in wales, proved a blessing to her family, and to the poorer inhabitants of the surrounding district. may all the trials any of us have to endure have a like good effect; for we may depend on it for that purpose are they sent. i am happy to say that, notwithstanding old snow's prognostication, hearty's yacht was not sold, and that many a pleasant summer cruise did i afterwards take with him on board the "frolic." the end. 